


USER.LITTLEMONSTER

by ryyves



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: A thief and an ex-private eye walk into New Hyperion City and immediately things go belly up, Benten's death specifically, Canon Divergence - Episode: s01e18 Juno Steel and the Final Resting Place, Chipped Juno, Chipped Nureyev, Chipped Rita, Death, Domestic, Final Resting Place Fix-It, Grief, Healing, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide attempt, In which Juno Steel comes home from a vacation, In which Juno Steel skips season 2 but manages to get himself a Soul anyway, Mystery, Other, Referenced Child Abuse, Sexual Content, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide, but only sort of, slow healing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-13
Updated: 2020-10-28
Packaged: 2021-03-08 05:08:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 50,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26980063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryyves/pseuds/ryyves
Summary: Juno Steel leaves with Peter Nureyev. Meanwhile, in Hyperion City, the election goes on.“I want to be better. I want… I want one of those things.  I’m tired of running from it. I want to go home. I want you.”A sharp buzz from the intercom, and the door clicks. Nureyev says, “I could never deny you. Come in.”
Relationships: Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel, Rita & Juno Steel
Comments: 36
Kudos: 65





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Every time I write Juno I have to slap a lot of tws in the tags. Each chapter will include a list of primary tws in the beginning notes, but refer to general tags. Note that there is candid portrayal of suicidal thoughts and discussions of self-harm and a previous suicide attempt throughout this piece. This is not to romanticize or be gratuitous, but because it’s very personal to me and Juno allows me to be honest with it.
> 
> Anyway, I’ve been working on this for a while and I’m delighted to bring it to you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm hung up on the part of the Monster's Reflection where the THEIA calls Juno User.LittleMonster, now in AU form. CWs for this chapter include mild sexual content, discussions of suicidal thoughts, and referenced self-harm.

“It’s going to be fine,” Juno tells Rita. The hangar, with its vaulted stone ceilings and its _cul-de-sacs_ beyond which lurk the ships, shining and enormous, presses in around them. They are deep under Hyperion City, underneath its old subway system. Rita’s eyes are wet and Juno is pretending he doesn’t feel the guilt rising in him — the same guilt that’s been there from the moment he awoke beside Nureyev in his apartment and decided everything that would have to go.

Rita stands before Juno in the doorway to the ship Nureyev booked a room on. She wears a pink blouse and a pencil skirt, as though she were trying, today, to appear as professional as possible in order to convince him to stay. Nureyev is talking to the captain, and Juno can hear the soft sounds of his voice. Their belongings have already been stowed away on the ship, one bag each. Before him, Rita; behind him, the rest of his life. And Juno, in the doorway.

“I know it’s going to be fine,” Rita says, as if it were obvious. “But if it were up to me, and I really think part of it should be, I’d say you can keep your money and buy your stuff back off the black market or wherever you sent it off to in like two days. But you’re not coming back and I’ll miss you.”

“I know. I’ll miss you too, Rita.”

“You’re not gonna forget about this place, are you?”

“Forget you? Of course not. Nothing in this galaxy or any could take away our history.”

The ship is warm behind him, its lights on in its room and its engine running. People surge around Juno and board the ship. They’re all faceless, these people who find leaving Hyperion easier than Juno. They don’t notice Juno and Rita. Everything considered, it’s a small ship, but Juno has seen very few in his time and finds it formidable anyway.

In a small voice, Rita says, “Will you come back?”

Something shifts behind Juno, and he turns to see Nureyev. His tinted glasses make it hard to see his eyes, but Juno can see the creases around his lips, the hint of his teeth. He slips a hand into Juno’s, and Juno squeezes.

The office door still says _Juno Steel Investigations_ ; he put it up to lease, but he won’t be around to answer queries. He’d gotten in contact with an agency and handed it over to them, because he didn’t want to put that responsibility on Rita when she never asked for it.

He’d be lying if he said that he doesn’t feel the sharp ache of melancholy, of loss, if he said that already Hyperion, far above them, didn’t feel a thousand light-years away. But if he gives it words, he’ll never be able to go.

The gauze over his eye itches. Juno reaches up to scratch it, but the moment his hand makes contact, he stops. He reminds himself what the doctor said: he needs to leave it alone in order to heal. Instead, he places his hand over the bandage and looks hard at Rita. For a second, he considers taking a picture of Rita now, like this, the last moment he’ll have with her.

Instead, he says, “I don’t know. This city’s always been home. I think it’s always going to be.”

“Then,” says Rita.

Juno says, “I’ve made up my mind. I told you about… Miasma, and you said you understood.”

“I do, but—” Rita sniffs. “But I don’t want to see you go.” She takes a second to decide, and then she surges forward. She wraps Juno up in the deepest hug he’s ever received. She is warm and soft, the sharp edges of her nails digging into his back and her feet on his. All the breath leaves Juno at once. He reaches up and folds her into the hug, his one hand still in Nureyev’s. He doesn’t look at the ship behind them.

The captain calls out, “Liftoff in five minutes.”

Juno pulls back from Rita. Gently, he says, “Guess that’s my call. Come on, let go.”

Rita sniffs, but she does let go.

Nureyev goes ahead of Juno. For a second, he turns around on the steps. “Goodbye, Rita.”

“Bye, Mister Thief,” says Rita dutifully.

And Nureyev vanishes into the ship.

Suddenly, despite the engine, the whole big room seems quiet. The only people on the ground are Juno, Rita, and the captain. This deep underneath Hyperion, the city is a ghost town, breathing through metal and heavy soil.

“Hey, Rita,” says Juno.

She looks at him with her sharp, delicate face, her lips pressed together as though to keep them from wobbling. The headlights on the ship illuminate her face, her hair, her shoes. They cast long shadows behind her and swallow Juno’s shadow entirely. He takes the picture like this, in his mind.

He says, “I love you. You know that, right?”

Rita’s face scrunches up. She looks down; she looks at the ship; she blushes. “That sounds awfully and unacceptably final. Take it back.”

“I want you to know,” says Juno.

“I know,” Rita mumbles. She wipes her eyes. “I love you too, Mister Steel. Now you go see the world, but send some pictures back for little old Rita.”

Juno smiles. “I will. Take care of yourself, Rita. Be in contact. Be… magnificent.”

She stands in the doorway while Juno, with empty arms, climbs the stairs to the ship. He looks behind him once, at the top; Rita stands on her tiptoes, watching him and waving while the airlock door slides down in front of him. Rita, Nureyev, and the rest of his life.

* * *

The ship slides through the hangar, through the brightly lit tunnels beneath the dome. Nureyev is waiting for Juno just beyond the door, and the moment the airlock releases Juno, Nureyev reaches for his hands. Juno rests his cheek on Nureyev’s bony shoulder, and Nureyev puts a hand on Juno’s waist. For a second, Juno closes his eyes.

The ship shudders around them. A flood of natural light falls over them, so red, not tempered in the slightest by Hyperion’s dome. Juno’s stomach lurches. He wonders if it’s all going to be like this, the apprehension in his gut, the shining walls, burnt up by the atmosphere. But he knows that for centuries people have traveled farther distances than this, to the edge of the galaxy and maybe even beyond, while he was busy guarding the streets of his home. He knows space travel is second nature to humanity, and that he has nothing to be afraid of.

Already most passengers have retreated to their rooms, to the dining hall where the view of the future is overpowering. Juno and Nureyev stand in a long hall; at one end, the russet atmosphere before them, the red desert; at the other, the view of the hangar tunnel from behind, crosslit by the taillights.

“Do you want to see it go?” says Nureyev.

Juno nods. His mouth is dry. Already, with the desert opening around him, he is farther from home than he’s ever been. Nureyev kisses the top of Juno’s head. The soft pressure of his chin against Juno’s hair.

Releasing Juno, Nureyev leads him down the hall toward the back, hand in hand.

It’s a smaller room than Juno was expecting. Even though he’d seen the size of the craft, a small passenger vehicle, he was expecting something bigger than that on the inside. A tangle of corridors, ceilings as vaulted as the hangars. The room is pretty much a lounge, with a few sofas and a gender-neutral toilet set into a side wall, and no other entrances besides the one that Juno and Nureyev came from. The window stretches from one wall to the other. Sunlight, reflecting off the red sand, pours in around them, and Juno raises a hand to his eye. He can see straight down the tunnel into the misty brightness.

Nureyev settles onto a sofa facing the window, but Juno remains standing. If he blinks, he could miss the whole city disappear.

The ship rises as they watch. The tunnel slides down, and the bright sand slides down too. For a second, Juno suffocates; he has been under this sand before, hundreds of feet of it, drowning in it. Its red heat, its burning crush. For a second, he is staring at the dark of it as it slides across the window, and then they breach the surface.

And Juno sees it all. The blue crackle of the dome, hundreds of yards from the place where the ship wobbles from side to side. Juno doesn’t feel it under his feet, but he can see it in the way the sand warps and shifts beneath him. And above the horizon line, Hyperion City. All its windows, all its great metal beams, catch the sun and turn the city gold. There was an ancient legend he read once, while he was studying the history of Hyperion City, of a king with fingers that made gold of everything they touched. It ended in heartbreak, he recalls, but for a time, it was beautiful.

Hyperion City, its buildings piled upon each other, rising high and higher into the brownish sky. Its streets hidden under the buildings, a city of people he can’t see from here, huge and warm and impersonal and taking up the whole view from the window.

Hyperion, the city of first light. If Juno had seen it like this before, he would have understood.

“What do you think?” murmurs Nureyev. His voice comes to Juno from a distance.

“I’m,” says Juno. _I’m afraid._ That will come later, he thinks. “It’s amazing.”

Juno watches as his city grows smaller in shining increments. He remains standing, his breath in his throat, and Nureyev remains seated.

The buildings are so high that no matter how far the ship climbs, Juno still can’t see the streets. But he recognizes the familiar architecture of Oldtown, less shiny and more stone and chitin. He can’t see his apartment, his office building, the entrance to the hangar where, hopefully, Rita isn’t still waiting.

The ship lurches up and Hyperion City shrinks all at once, like a blown bubble. The dome reflects the sun until he can barely see the highrises at all. Until the city is a speck in an uncaring desert. Juno sits back beside Nureyev, resting his head against the wall.

Nureyev’s shining eyes don’t hold the same wistfulness Juno is sure he carries in his, but there is a wonder there, like the view from a takeoff never ceases to awe him. But Juno doesn’t study him for long, because he doesn’t want to miss a second.

“I’m still gonna miss this place,” Juno tells Nureyev.

And Nureyev, to his credit, doesn’t ask, _Do you want to go back?_ He says, instead, “I know.”

Mars gets bigger before it gets smaller. It is nothing but a blank expanse, and the patterns drawn on it were made by nothing human. Juno turns away from this view, from the view of the old Mars. Nureyev holds him, running his hand across Juno’s back.

Nureyev only rouses Juno after the atmosphere has gone still around them and they can see the horizon in every direction. Juno looks up. The atmosphere hangs heavy over every horizon, changing the reflected light of the sun, coloring it with a heavy brush. Juno and Nureyev are still the same size, but he feels enormous with the view of his whole planet, ten thousand times larger than the life he made for himself, spread out in front of him, diminishing. Juno watches it and says his goodbyes in his head.

He tells Nureyev, “I’m ready for this.”

* * *

In their room, Nureyev changes into a soft nightgown. He changes in front of the window. Juno stands beside the door, where he has a perfect view of both Nureyev’s straining shoulders and the stars through the window. He watches Nureyev’s arms, silhouetted in the room’s white light against the black through the window. He watches the fabric slide down over Nureyev’s waist, his ass, his thighs, and Juno marvels.

Oh, and Nureyev knows what he’s doing to Juno.

And the stars sit in the space behind the window, not moving, and the sun is nothing but burning light in the black hollow of space behind them. All the vivid colors of atmosphere that they hid behind have been stripped away, and Juno can see them as they are.

Nureyev carried both their belongings to their room and stowed them under the bed. It’s a small room, white and green, with one window, a queen bed with folded-down covers, a closet and functional wardrobe, and some imitation paintings on the walls. There’s a small bathroom next to the closet. It’s better than quite a few hotel rooms Juno has stayed in, both cleaner and bigger. Juno doesn’t know how long they’ll be living in this room—over the past few days, while Juno set about selling his belongings to ensure Rita’s comfort of life, he and Nureyev have discussed every possibility—but he’s happy to live here.

Juno crosses the room and falls onto the bed. He props himself up on his elbows so he can still see out the window. He can feel the weight of Nureyev’s eyes on him. And he’s been inside Nureyev in more ways than one, so he can guess what that expression says.

He meets Nureyev’s gaze. It holds something so soft that Juno aches with it.

“Thank you, Nureyev,” says Juno.

“No need to thank me.”

“No, I’m serious. Thank you.”

Juno spends most of that first night looking out the window, either from bed or standing in front of it. He is dizzy with the black sky and its endless stars that make every constellation he’s ever seen seem tiny and unimportant. Where once he saw three stars in a cluster, he now sees three dozen. It is the most marvelous thing Juno Steel has ever seen.

Nureyev sits on the bed and plays solitaire with the overhead off and just the bedside lamp casting light in the room, occasionally glancing up to see Juno in front of the window. He might glance up more often, but Juno is enthralled, so he doesn’t notice. He lets Juno watch as long as he wants.

And then, after hours, Nureyev comes up beside Juno. He’s taken his glasses off and left them on the bedside table, then rests his arms around Juno’s waist. Juno can see Nureyev’s reflection in the glass, that beautiful face with those thin, sharp lips, a cunning expression on his face. Nureyev’s hands slide up under Juno’s shirt to stroke the lines of his stomach, never going too high or too low. Juno takes in a long, deep breath and closes his eyes. Nureyev’s body, in just the slip, is so close to Juno’s.

“It’s late,” Nureyev murmurs, his lips brushing Juno’s cheek. “Come get some sleep. It’ll still be here tomorrow. I promise.”

“I know that.” Juno reaches up for Nureyev’s hands and guides them, one to his belt buckle and one to his chest. Nureyev grins, so Juno turns his head and catches those lips in a kiss. He kisses Nureyev soft and lazy, at first, and Nureyev returns it with hunger.

And when Nureyev takes him, Juno keeps his hands on the window where no one can see him and looks at the stars. At the reflected stars in Nureyev’s eyes.

* * *

Some mornings, Juno touches Nureyev before they get out of bed. They lie tangled together beneath the covers, Nureyev’s slip riding up to his hips and sometimes higher. The sky outside is dark no matter the time of day, unless they look at the sun, diminishing behind them. While they are in the Solar System, the captain tells them early on in the journey, the ship will be moving slowly.

They let their hands wander — to lips and teeth, to nipples, to the curves of ass and thigh. Sometimes Juno keeps his eyes closed and lets his fingers figure out the shape of Peter Nureyev, master thief. He forgets himself in kissing Nureyev’s neck.

And sometimes Juno stares at Nureyev for hours. Sometimes he wakes earlier and rests his knuckles on Nureyev’s cheek until Nureyev wakes up. Pushes his hair back. Kisses his forehead.

Every morning, Nureyev wakes with his hair tangled and in his face, a far cry from the neat slick he usually wears it in. He wipes crusted sleep from his eyes, looks at Juno with a blurry expression. Neither of them are young, but Nureyev, upon waking, looks like a softer man.

He’s beautiful, and Juno can’t stop looking. Juno can’t stop marveling that this man wants to be with him, and travel the world with him, and wake up and stay.

When your first instinct is to run, it’s hard to imagine that everyone else’s isn’t.

This is the life they’ve made for themselves. This is every future Juno would never have let himself imagine. And, yes, traveling the galaxy together brings a level of commitment Juno has never experienced. It’s new territory, and it scares him.

But it thrills him, too. It sends fire through his veins that sometimes he can only get out with Nureyev’s hands on him, kissing him until the only thing he can remember is the shape of Nureyev’s lips and the stars behind his eyes that look so similar to the stars out the window. He is dizzy with it, intoxicated.

He learns, day by day, what Nureyev likes in bed, and what Nureyev likes is this: sitting on Juno’s waist, grinding up and down his body, holding Juno’s hands at his side or over his head and telling Juno not to buck. Juno’s knees around Nureyev’s waist, Nureyev touching him so softly, bending down to lick from Juno’s chest to his neck. Telling Juno, in that rough, sweet voice, exactly what to do. How to touch him, how to move when he is beneath Juno, how to hold him on the edge for as long as he can hold out.

What Nureyev likes is this: taking control.

And, god, Juno can’t get enough of it.

* * *

And he can’t get enough of Nureyev. He tells Nureyev he loves him as often as he can. Softly, with feeling, in the quiet of their room; called through a crowded restaurant; whispered into brief kisses. He says it just to see that smile spread sweet and bright across Nureyev’s face. Juno has never seen a smile like that before, dazzling and dazed.

He has had his share of lovers in his bed in the morning, grinning in a room pungent with sex, grinning their nighttime triumphs, making Juno breakfasts. It was easy to think that was all there was. That love started and ended there, with a sleep-soft expression and a softer voice. With a thank you. With heels clicking down the hall toward the elevator, walking out of Juno’s life.

Nureyev looks at him like no one has ever said those words to him before, his whole life long. Like each syllable, hell, each vowel, is a gift he doesn’t know how to hold.

Sometimes when Nureyev’s hands fall on Juno’s waist during a slow dance or on his knuckles across the table, he hesitates. He pulls his hand back, just a centimeter, his nails sharp in the air above Juno’s skin. He doesn’t know how to touch another person. Juno is realizing that.

He isn’t used to someone who won’t look away. Who bridges the distance, who touches Nureyev first. He raises his hand that last centimeter until their hands are hummingbirds in the air, and Nureyev grips him like a lifeline.

“I love you, Peter Nureyev,” says Juno Steel, and he watches the shiver go through Nureyev’s body. Nureyev closes his eyes just for a second, and when he opens them, they are more intent than Juno has ever seen them.

Nureyev kisses Juno so long Juno can’t remember to open his eyes when they break apart. And Nureyev smiles, a soft, watery affair, and says, “I love you, Juno Steel.”

* * *

Juno changes the bandage over his eye every day. It seems like half the belongings he brought from Mars are medical in nature. He turns all the lights on in the bathroom and peels the dressing off as carefully as he can. He drops it in the bin and, even more carefully, cleans the wound. It’s healing well, he thinks, but he doesn’t have a doctor to confirm it. Even the gentlest pressure sends sharp pain through his skull.

At first, this is a private ritual. He closes the door out of habit. When the pain hits, he clenches his teeth and holds a hand in front of his mouth to muffle the groan. Nureyev must hear it anyway, because Juno can hear footsteps.

“Juno?” says Nureyev.

 _It was worth it,_ Juno tells himself. He says, “What?”

“Do you mind if I come in?”

Juno realizes, for the first time, the closed door. “Yeah, sure.”

The door swings open and Juno comes up beside Juno in front of the sink. It is easier to think of the wound as just a part of him when Juno is the only one who sees it, but Nureyev is looking at him in the mirror, biting his lip. An instinctual desire rises in Juno, and he says, “Don’t pity me.”

“I don’t,” says Nureyev, so matter-of-fact it washes Juno in embarrassment. “I was there, remember? But I was wondering if you wanted any help.”

Juno looks down, where his new dressing and his box of cotton swabs sit amidst medical paraphernalia — white petroleum, a bottle of painkillers. His discarded dressing sits face-up in the bin, and he can see discharge on it. There is still discharge leaking out of his eye, and but the swelling has gone down.

Nureyev continues. “You told me most of what the doctor told you, but I’d need to hear it again.”

“Okay,” says Juno.

A pleased expression spreads across Nureyev’s face.

Nureyev sits Juno down on the toilet lid while Juno explains the procedure. His eye socket still stings, and he tells Nureyev as much.

“I’ll be careful,” Nureyev promises.

Juno wouldn’t have guessed that Nureyev was new to the process from the way he gets down to business. He washes his hands and cleans Juno’s wound with a gentle touch. Even though Juno only has one eye, he closes it. Once, Juno winces, and Nureyev apologizes before Juno goes quiet. The cold wetness of the white petroleum spreads from Juno’s sewn-shut eyelid to his brow, and he shivers.

But Nureyev could have a doctor’s hand, and he doesn’t stop.

When Juno opens his eye, the bathroom light is so bright. He looks at Nureyev, backlit and concentrating, his bottom lip between his teeth. There is an intimacy in this that Juno has never known, not when he was left to pull out his own deep splinters and bandage his own wounds and go to school with no gauze on anything as a kid, not when the nurses who served the HCPD worked so brusquely they brought more pain than the injury.

“I think that’s it,” Nureyev says. He turns on the faucet and wipes the petroleum jelly from his hands. Flecks of water land on Juno. Juno’s eye throbs from the ministrations.

It takes Nureyev more time to figure out how to apply the dressing. His warm hands wrap the gauze around Juno’s head, his face so close Juno can smell his breath, can feel it on his cheek. His fingers are deft and gentle; they glide over Juno’s skin. He pins the dressing in place and smiles at Juno.

And there is no trace of pity in it.

From then on, it becomes a ritual. Juno showers with the dressings off and Nureyev sits beside him on the bed afterward, Juno’s hair still dripping, and helps him clean and dress the stitches. Once, Juno wouldn’t have let anyone see him like this, much less touch him, but he’s handed Peter Nureyev his heart in his hands.

“How much longer do you have to do this?” asks Nureyev one day.

“Until there’s no more discharge and the swelling’s gone down and it’s healed, I guess.”

“It’s getting there,” says Nureyev. “It’s not nearly as bad as it looked when you first let me see it.”

Juno says, “I was thinking of finding an eye patch for it. What do you think? Think I could pull it off?”

Nureyev chuckles, and the sound of it lodges in Juno’s chest. “I know you could pull it off. Though you might give me a heart attack with it, considering how enormously sexy eye patches are.”

“You ever dated someone with an eye patch?”

“You’d be my first.”

“Shut up,” says Juno, so Nureyev kisses him.

* * *

It’s good that they only have one bag each, because they never ride in the same ship twice.

While they are still in the Solar System, they weave through the asteroid belt. Even at a distance, and even with its eye turned away from them, Jupiter is magnificent. It swirls like candy. In the sunlight, its surface looks soft. You could stroke it like a cat. Juno watches it through the windows in the dining hall, when he’s not looking at Nureyev or the people around him, people of Hyperion City who he’d never met.

The novelty of space travel begins to wear off long before they reach the gravitational field of Neptune. Nureyev has a couple of maps, and he opens them for Juno during meals — paper maps, holographic maps that he spins with his hands in the air. All of them are unmarked. When you live a life like Nureyev’s, you have to hide your trail.

There are places Nureyev will not go, of course, planets or solar systems he steers Juno away from, but mostly he lets Juno pick whatever he wants.

And they are giddy on it, both of them. Sometimes Nureyev knows the places Juno suggests; sometimes he spins stories of heists or rest stops or flyovers on a planet whose name Juno asks him to pronounce. Juno listens to these stories and envisions them in his head. The more Nureyev speaks, the more the galaxy seems a place that Juno is a part of. The more it seems like something he can touch.

“Come on, you get a say, too,” Juno insists one day at breakfast, after Nureyev slides out of suggesting a place for the third time.

“And I will. But I’ve been here before, and you haven’t, so right now is all about seeing the places you want to see.”

“I’m not gonna just accept that. I said Triton, so it’s your turn.”

Nureyev laughs, and his eyes crinkle up behind his glasses. Juno stares. “Okay.”

And there are so many places to see. Mars was more than the first settlement; it was the first shred of proof that humanity could live, could sustain itself, on an inhospitable planet. If it could be done on Mars, where radiation rose from the ground itself, then it could be done anywhere — the coldest moons, the most toxic atmospheres. With the right technology and enough solid ground beneath your feet, humans could live anywhere.

There’s something to be said for human resilience.

They don’t have the clothes for Triton, of course, but every indoor area is temperature-controlled, and the whole human settlement is a series of indoor areas. The ship docks and they disembark with about a third of the passengers. Some wear coats and scarves, but Juno just has his old, worn jacket and gauze over his eye. Nureyev slides his arm through Juno’s, intertwining their fingers.

Everywhere they land, they take each other on dates. They are tourists, staying on one planet, in one city, for a couple of weeks. Hand in hand, they walk the streets, which are never anything like the streets of Hyperion City. They sit on restaurant balconies overhanging great prismatic chasms, in spacecraft orbiting uninhabitable gas planets. They hike through tangled deserts with helmets and oxygen on their backs.

Juno laughs more than he ever has, except maybe as a child, maybe with his brother. Those were snatched moments, though, and the glee had to make up for a dozen trembling nights. Here, now, Juno has is a long future of nothing but this joy.

It terrifies him.

It’s not something he wants to think about, so he looks hard at Nureyev’s face, his eyes scrunched up, the subtle dimple on his left cheek that Juno is learning how to recognize. He looks at Nureyev until he can see nothing but Nureyev, nothing but their latest escapade into a rocky desert that looked nothing like Mars’, and nothing sitting, vivid, behind his eye.

Some of the ships are practically cruisers, while others have broken panels along the hallways. Juno picks absently at these panels until Nureyev snatches his hand away. For a second, Juno just stares at Nureyev, and then he starts laughing.

Nureyev laughs, too.

“So this is what it’s like?” Juno says when he can manage.

Nureyev’s smile is so bright it could melt Triton. “Pretty much. You get used to it.”

“I hope I never get used to it,” says Juno.

“Taking chances. Living day to day. Having all of _this_ —” He gestures out the window, beyond which they can see the faint colors of a nebula. They have walked on planets where they could see nebulae through the atmosphere, pink-tinted. “And knowing it. Being familiar with it. It’s the life, Juno.”

Juno collects the experiences like eggshells. He collects the joys and they don’t dissipate as easily as he’s used to, because when they do, there’s always another waiting that afternoon, or the next morning, or in the eyes of Peter Nureyev. Juno collects snapshots of Nureyev’s smile in the back of his head, filed away under _Something Beautiful._ And every time Nureyev smiles that smile just for Juno, all sharp and mischievous angles, his eyes half-moons, that dimple drawn into stark focus, something in Juno melts.

“I was wondering,” says Nureyev one day, his face bluelit by the map in front of them. They’re in the dining hall, and Nureyev is drawing across the map in a bold line. He pauses for a second and waves his hand through the air. Outside the window, which is smaller and more industrial on this craft, a great blue star passes so close the ship is sucked into its gravity. Its light falls across the people in the hall, across their hands. “Mars—Hyperion City—they’re everything to you, and yet you left with me.”

“I couldn’t stay there,” Juno tells him. It’s easy to say.

“I know that. I was there. But you told Rita you didn’t know if you were going back. Do you really?”

“Not know?” says Juno. “Yeah.”

Nureyev goes quiet. He moves his lips, and Juno thinks he’s saying, _You mean—?_

And suddenly, Juno is terrified of what an admission like this would mean. But Nureyev’s eyes are soft and unsure on him, and he has to say something. “I could stay here with you as long as you’re willing to keep me. I don’t need to go back. I lived my life there, but I guess I’m ready for something different.”

Nureyev nods, but Juno isn’t done. He says, “I’m ready to see what living looks like.”

The vowels on Nureyev’s lips say, _You._ Something dark crosses his face, just for a second, and then it slides off. And Juno wonders what Nureyev isn’t telling him.

But there are so many things Juno isn’t saying, too, because he doesn’t want to be that kid again, and he knows he has no right to ask. A secret is an offering, and if he isn’t offering his own, he doesn’t get to supplicate.

“Well,” says Nureyev. “That’s apparent. You’re more starry-eyed than I’ve ever seen anyone.”

“That can’t be true.”

“Have you seen yourself? The first thing you do when you wake up is look out the window. The last thing you do before you close your eyes is, you guessed it. If I wasn’t here, you might actually get yourself killed.” The word falls into the silence, and Nureyev realizes at the same moment Juno does that it was the wrong thing to say. To his credit, Nureyev doesn’t look away. But Juno does.

_A man and a lady walk into a room and they both walk out, even though one of them didn’t want to, and now they both have to live with it._

“I’m not starry-eyed,” says Juno in his gruffest voice.

“It’s cute,” Nureyev says. “It’s nothing to be self-conscious about. You’re cute.” He collapses the maps and folds them into his loose jacket pockets. He rises, waiting a second for Juno to follow suit.

In their room, Nureyev says, “I think we need to talk about that, Juno.”

Juno sighs. Nureyev sits on the bed, while Juno goes to the window. “There’s nothing to talk about. What happened happened, and we got out of it, so what’s the big deal?” What’s Nureyev going to say? _You should have fought harder? I would have?_ It settles cold in Juno’s gut. He wants to run but there’s nowhere to go. His legs itch with it.

Nureyev says, “I’m not trying to tell you what you did was wrong. I’m not trying to make you ashamed, and I’m not here to plead for your life. But it’s not good to let it sit heavy as a secret between us. You can talk to me, Juno. If it comes up again, if these feelings come up again—”

“Just say I’m suicidal,” Juno says. It comes out brusque.

“Okay. If you’re ever feeling suicidal in the future, you can talk to me. But I’ll need you to tell me what you need.”

“It’s just a part of me,” says Juno, and a part of him feels resigned. He’s never explained it in this many words before, and it tastes metallic. It tastes like something that will kill him if he keeps it on his tongue. “I’ve lived with it forever. I actually don’t remember a time in my life when I didn’t think like this. It’s not something that comes on sometimes. It’s all the time.”

“I noticed,” says Nureyev. He doesn’t move to rise. He looks at Juno with those steady eyes that Juno can’t meet.

“What?”

“Your arms.”

Oh.

“Yeah. That’s… just a part of me, too.” There are so many things he could say, but he’s old and tired and Nureyev isn’t getting up, isn’t opening the door, isn’t walking away. So it’s okay. For now, it’s okay.

Nureyev says, “What was your favorite place we’ve visited? Out of all of them, which would you return to first?”

The sudden detour puts Juno at ease. He sits on the bed and lays back until his head falls into Nureyev’s lap. Nureyev’s hands move at once to stroke his hair, to trace his jaw. Juno says, “It’s not about the places. They’re all beautiful, of course. It’s about seeing them with you.”

“I didn’t take you for the sentimental sort.”

“It’s not sentiment,” Juno tells him. But he doesn’t know how to tell Nureyev the next part: that with home a memory in the distance, his old apartment and office for sale and Rita in front of her million screens in her office and the streets a little bit dirtier, a little bit darker, without him, he has to have something else to call his home. Something to hold onto, something to return to, something to live for when the living gets too rough. And it’s Nureyev.

Above Juno, Nureyev is looking at him with those probing eyes, so Juno has to keep talking. He says, “But it’s nice. Thank you, Nureyev.”

Nureyev lifts Juno’s hand and presses a kiss to its knuckles. In a soft, soft voice, he says, “If you could live anywhere, where would it be?”

Juno says, “Don’t ask me to choose.” He is looking at Peter Nureyev, and they both know. “You have to get to know a place if you want to call it home. Its filthy streets, its beautiful heart.”

Nureyev says, “Shouldn’t it be shining?”

Closing his eyes, Juno presses his lips together. Nureyev’s hands move through his hair. “I’d be waiting for the other shoe to drop the whole time.”

“Are you waiting now?”

“I don’t know,” says Juno honestly. “But it’s nice.”

Nureyev says, “Thank you for coming with me.”

And when he leans down to kiss Juno, their lips collide sideways.

The future is new and bright and wide, and Peter Nureyev is holding Juno’s hand as he steps into it.

* * *

Every hyperspace jump the ships make scrambles Juno’s insides and coughs them up beside a new star. Nureyev says it gets easier with time, but Juno sees no signs of that. Months pass this way, in ships or on planets, looking out windows at all the bright places in the night where a billion new constellations exist for every place where they stop. Juno puts his tongue down Nureyev’s throat as often as he can, and when Nureyev moans, it melts deep inside Juno.

He wants to make Nureyev make that sound as often as he can. He kisses Nureyev at lookout points over gaseous planets and on solar satellites with a crew generations old and locked off from contact with anyone but independent travelers.

He pushes Nureyev’s shirt up in their rooms, holds Nureyev’s thighs until he writhes, falls asleep in the scent of it.

There is a part of him that wonders what would have happened if he had left. Who he would have been. What the world would have looked like, whether he would still feel like he’s lying to himself.

Juno Steel has never been the sort of person who stays, but this time, he is trying as hard as he can.

Juno doesn’t know when he first hears the words. They mean nothing to him at first— _the THEIA Experiment_ —but they’re always spoken with the flippancy a voice adopts when it’s trying to dismiss something bigger than it wants to examine. Juno starts hearing it everywhere. _THEIA_ tossed like currency through the air. In retrospect, he will wonder why he attributed that much weight to it. He will wonder if the word experiment curled inside him first or the mention of Mars.

All he knows is that when one person starts talking about it, the rest of the world does, too.

He isn’t afraid, but he does worry.

“Have you ever heard of it?” he asks Nureyev. “I can’t find anything on it, not in any databases or files or papers. I’m trying to get some Hyperion City new stream, but I guess we’re too far away.” He’s fiddling with his comms, trying to get them to connect him to Mars. He’s cursing at the machine, really, until Nureyev takes it out of his hand and presses a few keys.

The familiar interface pops up, but it doesn’t wash the frustration from Juno’s body. Still, he can navigate from here.

“I’ve never heard of it,” says Nureyev.

Juno bites his lip so hard that Nureyev reaches out and touches it. Juno says, “I need to look into this.”

“Do what you need to.”

So Juno holes up in their bed, his comms propped on his knees, searching keywords and listening to television spots. The sounds fill up the room, but Juno is listening for _THEIA, THEIA._ The room could be bright or dark. Wolf 1061 could be millions of miles from the ship or right beside it.

There isn’t a lot of information, not that he can access from space at least, but what Juno gathers is this: newly appointed Hyperion City Mayor Ramses O’Flaherty has introduced some sort of new technology that renovated the city in a matter of days. That’s it. Every news spot, every bare-bones news article from Hyperion, leaves a trail of breadcrumbs that leads nowhere.

Juno doesn’t know why it settles so cold in his gut, but he’s learned to trust his instincts. As a private eye, ignoring them could get you killed.

But he is sure, without understanding why, that this isn’t a piece of information that’s traveled quicker than Juno, because there is nothing to see. There is nothing to see. He pounds every keyword he can think into the machine, and it babbles about the start of Hyperion City’s glory days.

And it’s the word _experiment._ Hyperion as a guinea pig. Bars and promises and tests and his city, the whole city subjected to it.

He feels himself sliding into the old patterns of Juno Steel, private eye, searching as deep as he can. There’s an old thrill, like muscle memory, but it’s more than that. Hyperion City is still his home; he still owes it everything.

He puts the pieces together. He’s far away, yes, but in a city where the news runs in a constant streams, where you can learn to ignore it but where it never goes away, this absence of information worries him. The journalists in the city are good, even though most of the newspapers are exaggerated and sensationalized. That worries him more, actually. If the journalists haven’t made a sensation out of the THEIA Experiment, yet everything he does find suggests a massive overhaul of the entire structure of the city, then this whole project must be kept under tight wraps.

His eyes sting. He doesn’t realize the comms are shaking on his knees. He doesn’t notice Nureyev come in until the bed sinks beneath him and Nureyev’s hand lands on Juno’s shoulder.

Nureyev holds out a plate of food. “I brought something to eat.”

Juno sets the comms aside and takes the plate. For a moment, he just looks at it. Nureyev’s face is sharp with worry, and Juno feels a stab of shame.

While Juno eats, Nureyev asks him what he found, and Juno talks it out. Nureyev follows him easily, his leaps in logic, his conjectures and conclusions. Juno finishes eating before he finishes explaining, and he sets the plate on the bedside table.

“I’ve looked everywhere” says Juno. “I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m worried, and my gut says I’m right.”

“Do you have any theories?” says Nureyev.

Juno presses the heel of his hand to his eye, welcoming the starry black behind his eyelids. “That’s the thing. I can’t afford to theorize. It’ll eat me alive. I can’t make things up like I can fix anything. I don’t have a lead and I’m just… I’m just me. I closed up shop. I’m just Juno. I’m not a private eye.”

“But it’s eating you anyway.”

“That’s why I want to go back,” says Juno at last. He almost says, _home._

“It’s not your job to save Hyperion City,” Nureyev tells him, gently. He rests a hand on Juno’s knee.

“I know.” It’s as though Juno was looking for a reason to turn back, to cut short this honeymoon, to put his feet back where they’re familiar. He has been ignoring this part of him, but it purrs like an animal inside of him. He hovers before every star he passes; he looks at it and asks it to show him if this is home, but it is just an object in space. The past lies dead behind him in the red, red sand. He says, “But all the same, it’s my city and I need to know. Before it’s too late.”

And Peter Nureyev, who had said he would go without Juno if Juno wanted to stay, his eyes closed like curtains, who Juno had almost proved right, says, “Okay.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a lighter chapter, content-wise. Things are beginning to happen, though, and I'm very excited to share the rest.

Juno doesn’t watch Mars on the descent. The moment the Red Planet comes into view, he closes the window. Nureyev doesn’t question it, doesn’t take his hand and pry for an answer, and for this, Juno loves him even more.

The past is a dead thing, he tells himself, but the small craft dodges asteroids and he’s going right back.

If he was afraid to leave Hyperion, he is terrified now.

He spent the night before digging into current news from Hyperion City on his comms until the thing died and he had to recharge it — although on a ship, day and night mean nothing more than numbers on the wall clocks. Nureyev fell asleep between Juno and the wall, and sometimes, looking up, Juno would brush Nureyev’s hair back from his temples.

While the craft shuttles toward Mars, Juno takes a cold shower. He packs his belongings haphazardly; he opens and shuts the windows. The sun casts its endless light on him, on the sharp angles of Nureyev’s face and the glasses that cover it. Nureyev is beautiful, and Juno looks at him and doesn’t look outside.

They lose speed as they prepare to enter the atmosphere. The craft shudders. After all this time, Juno still has to brace himself.

He knows how it goes; they land on a runway miles outside the city and are conveyed into the tunnels under the sand. Every inch they sink into the earth fills Juno with a new dread, but the shuddering stops.

“Here’s to hoping it’s nothing, huh?” says Juno, shouldering his bag.

“Can’t hurt to check.”

Nureyev follows Juno through the empty hangar. Juno hasn’t spent much time inside places like these, but he imagines them busy, the way it was when he and Nureyev departed. All the posters still hang along the walls, wrinkled but otherwise perfectly preserved. The shops set into the walls have grates pulled down over them. Juno tests one. Locked.

The floors are grimy plaster and the walls have water damage. Juno can hear their footsteps echo in the small tunnels. These hangars, Juno knows, are mostly rebuilt versions of original hangars used to send flyover settlers from Hyperion City to systems further out. Since the war, they’ve fallen out of fashion; Juno imagines this one hasn’t been touched up since the days of active combat.

Near the entrance, where sunlight falls down in sheets, three people in pressed white shirts greet them. Each of them has a full digital screen before them, and they type without looking down. Something about them strikes Juno as odd, but he can’t pin them down.

They take Juno and Nureyev’s names and identifying information. Nureyev gives the name _Alastair Clay,_ because he’s always had a flare for the dramatic.

Then they ask Juno and Nureyev to fill out a form. Juno writes off the questions as protocol, because he’s never returned to Hyperion City before — _What is your purpose for travel? How long do you intend to stay?_

“We’re travelers,” says Nureyev in his sweet Outer Rim accent. He catches Juno’s eye for just a second. “Tourists. Is this place always so busy?”

No one laughs. One person in front of them gives answers to a woman in a white shirt, and a father and child stand behind them. Most of the doors to loading pads are closed.

It doesn’t click so much as settle in Juno like sand after a storm. These people look happy, genuinely happy, to be working in these godforsaken tunnels. The sunlight only reaches them from behind, and some of them are going into or coming out of a door set back from the main room. Once, Juno sees the woman in the white shirt take a passenger who says he’s coming home to live with his family through that door.

But he doesn’t get to think about it, because the person in front of him is typing faster than Juno can blink. His vital information and Nureyev’s appear in front of them.

“You’re cleared for entry,” says the man.

Nureyev says, “Let’s go see what we can find.”

* * *

The city didn’t wait for them. That’s the impression that lodges in Juno Steel when he steps out into the sun. The plasma dome overhead makes the sky almost blue, and its heat reaches Juno deep beneath the skyscrapers.

All the buildings shine like a bug’s eyes, glass and glittering metal. They’re so bright it could be summer, except the streets are cleaner than Juno has ever seen them. No litter in the gutters, no teenagers in ratty shirts feigning anonymity, no children walking home alone with no mothers to take care of them.

And the people shine, too. They keep to the sidewalks, their shoulders back, their chests puffed, and they look for too long at Juno and Nureyev. After catching the eyes of a few, Juno turns his gaze toward the skyscrapers.

Juno knows this area of the city. He knows its buildings are dark with chitin and stone, knows they’re covered with cracks. Dirt-touched, in disrepair. Bikes chained to fire hydrants and skateboards propped against walls, women smoking on the front steps, families arguing behind open windows. The sort of city you could disappear in. Dirt on your jacket, mud on your shoes, a grin that nothing in the world could touch.

Now, the city lies on its back like an insect, and the great blue dome of the sky looks down on it.

“Huh,” says Juno. “Looks like Hyperion was just waiting for me to leave to get its act together.”

But it’s more than that. Juno leads them nowhere in particular, down streets he knows without looking at the signs. Down streets he thinks he knows, rather, because he’s taken a left and a right and he has no idea where he is. He stops short in a wide boulevard. Nureyev stops, too, a foot from him; he has his neck craned to see the tops of the buildings, but he doesn’t realize what’s wrong, because he never lived here.

It looks like a different city entirely.

It’s not just that it’s shining, or spotless. It’s not just that the people walk in perfectly straight lines down the sidewalks, or that none of the cars drove up onto the sidewalk, or that there are no bags of rubbish piled against the sides of the dumpsters for stray cats to get into. It’s not just that the kids have round, rosy cheeks, and it’s not just the way people look at him with guarded expressions in their shining, shining eyes.

He doesn’t want to be here. This isn’t home.

Juno says, quietly, “Does anything seem off to you?”

“It certainly doesn’t look like I remember,” Nureyev offers.

Dread drips like water into Juno’s lungs. He doesn’t want to be here, one finger away from figuring out what’s wrong,

“Something’s not right.” He almost says, _Let’s go to my office,_ before he remembers that he doesn’t have one anymore.

“I think we should go,” says Nureyev, as though he knows what Juno is thinking.

“There’s nowhere to go.”

Nureyev says in a tight voice, “I mean we should go now.”

Juno looks down from the highrises. At the end of the street, a robot has just turned a corner, shining in the sun. Juno has to raise his hand to block its reflection; Nureyev, in sunglasses, doesn’t bother.

“That’s not good,” says Juno. “Hey… robot.”

As the robot rolls toward them, the people on the sidewalk step aside in practiced motions. On its shining side, Juno sees the word THEIA.

Okay. That’s what it is. He turns it over in his head, this robot scheme.

And yet. The way the people all surged aside, in concert, like sand. The way none of them looked at the robot as though it was remarkable, as though it was anything worth thinking about. The way the cars on the street parted for it.

“You’re right. We have to go,” Juno tells Nureyev.

* * *

They hide in a small courtyard behind several restaurants. The only ways in or out are the restaurants’ back doors and a long, thin gap between two buildings, thinner than the robot. The courtyard has a couple of garbage bins and a three electric bikes, only one of which is chained. Overhead, Juno can see residential windows in the smooth, smooth walls of the buildings, plants on windowsills, a couple of cats. The buildings are so bright Juno envies Nureyev’s sunglasses.

Juno sits against a wall, where he can see the gap but can’t be seen himself from the other side. The asphalt is cleaner than he knew it could be, and he doesn’t complain. He takes his comms out and flips through its logs. Even through his jacket, Juno is cold.

“We have to be careful, and I don’t have a plan,” Nureyev is saying. He paces the courtyard, and every time he passes the gap, Juno’s heart rate spikes.

“Here’s a plan. Don’t get caught.” He doesn’t mean to snap, but his blood is wind inside him, pushing him in every direction, and all those shining eyes on him as he and Nureyev ducked into the gap still make him uneasy.

“Obviously,” says Nureyev.

There are robots in Juno’s city and the people don’t even notice them.

 _What do we know?_ he asks himself. It is easier to find information on the ground. Within half an hour, he’s found a plethora of press conferences and spots promising new information to come. He watches Mayor O’Flaherty complimenting the initial successes; he reads through backlogs of the news, dating back two months.

He doesn’t find when it started—not when the city first changed, but when someone, in their laboratory, in their architect’s studio, decided they knew best for Hyperion City. When Mayor Ramses O’Flaherty decided to remake the world.

He wants to know, but the deeper he goes, the less information there is. And the flow of information ceased about four days ago.

Something happened four days ago, but he gets more and more frustrated the deeper he digs.

Juno finds this: it’s not called the THEIA Experiment. It’s the THEIA Project, and it started in Oldtown.

This is what he knows: the THEIA Operating System remade the city from the ground up. It displaced a few million people at a time, and within days, the old city was gone and this shining, perfect city was left in its place.

But that doesn’t explain the robots, and it doesn’t explain the people.

Because Juno is growing more sure every minute that something has changed with the people. Sure, everybody dreams of a utopia, but the streets are noisy with playing children and their placid guardians and robots rolling up and down the center lines, not looking at anyone except for Juno.

“We have to get back out there,” Juno tells Nureyev.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“No,” says Juno . His voice sounds strange. “But I have to see.”

* * *

They keep to back streets to avoid the THEIA Bots. There aren’t many, but, inevitably, when a person sees Juno, a robot is not far behind. Fortunately, the city crush has dwindled, and people walk in neat rows down the sidewalk, keeping to one side. Their faces are placid and content, their eyes like locked boxes.

But Juno notices every eye that lands on him. And, from the way Nureyev’s hand tenses in his, Nureyev notices, too.

Juno swings by the office. The city is unrecognizable, but Juno knows the streets from walking them every day for almost twenty years, and he knows where to turn. He knows every step of his city, even if he can’t find any of the landmarks he recognizes — the trees, the statues, the irregularly-shaped office buildings. There are more trees, now, and more statues, and the buildings rise neatly toward the sky.

Juno didn’t watch the spacecraft touch down, but he imagines that if he had, he’d have seen a brand new skyline.

From across the street, he can see his old window and nothing behind it. He’s six stories up, and where once he had a sign saying _Juno Steel Investigations,_ now the window opens into a dark mouth. He can see Rita’s window, too, her office adjacent to his. Where, coming back from a day on the job, he had been able to see the back of her head through that window, the glow of her screens, nothing. An empty space. That’s the part that hurts more, he thinks.

That, and the fact that he recognizes the space where his office was, but he doesn’t recognize the walls. He doesn’t recognize the window frames.

 _Get it together,_ he tells himself roughly. _You can’t stand around gawking all day._

The front door opens for him, and he releases a breath. Step one.

He is thinking about hiding here, about setting up fort, about reloading the blaster he keeps in his bag out of habit, about watching through the window like he’s in a stakeout, or a war. He is thinking about haunting, about his old haunts. He knows might have to barricade the door from a robot, but the robots haven’t given him reason to fear them.

Still, there’s a quiet warning bell in his gut, and he knows too well to trust it.

The office building is mostly residential, the kind that doesn’t have a reception desk. A windowless yet well-kept hall leads back to the stairwell, brightly lit, and Juno takes them two at a time. Every time he glances at Nureyev, Juno sees the same unease in his eyes.

On the door to his office space rests the outline of the words Rita put up in white letters. Juno can see his name in the angle of the afternoon light on glass.

He turns the knob, rattles it, but the door doesn’t budge.

Juno rests his head on the cool glass. He sees a new desk perched atop a new rug, brighter than any he’s ever had, and new portraits on the wall. Families, mostly, beaming couples with children. How long has he been gone? Months. He doesn’t know what he expected other than a new tenant, half his life locked to him forever. Rita gone, the view from his desk, all the things that make up a life.

“This is the place, huh?” says Nureyev behind him. For a second, Juno wishes Nureyev hadn’t spoken, wishes his moment of reverie could stretch out as long as he needs it to.

“This is the place.”

“It’s not exactly you.”

Juno laughs. “What, you don’t like the decor?”

“Must have looked nicer when it was yours.”

Juno steps aside so Nureyev can look in. “It did. But I think that’s only because it was mine.”

* * *

Juno keeps Nureyev close on the trek to his apartment. He doesn’t say where he’s going, and Nureyev doesn’t ask too many questions. Juno is aware of his every breath, of how loud it comes out. His feet know every corner to turn at, every street to cross, which is good, because the closer he gets, the more his unease grows. It’s not the thought of seeing his place empty — he saw it that way before he left, him and Nureyev packing up all his belongings, sorting the few to keep and the many to sell.

Those were good days, the first days in many long months of joy.

On the comms, Mayor O’Flaherty is talking about _the Newtown Experiment._ He is naming it a success, and the reporters are saying, _How did you know it would work?_

And O’Flaherty is saying, _It took some time to sort through all the kinks, as is the case for all good science, but I had faith in the people of Hyperion City. I still do. That’s why I bring the THEIA to the whole city._

 _Newtown,_ Juno thinks. Huh.

He doesn’t have a key anymore to his apartment building. When he buzzes in, he is told that he has reached the address, a blank, automated voice listing its vacancy. He puts his hand on the door and closes his eyes. It’s not his, he tells himself. It hasn’t been his in months. He did that himself.

The comms are still talking to him, the mayor’s voice and other officials whose names Juno never learned. Nureyev reaches around Juno and pries the comms from his hand. For a second, Juno’s hand twitches, his fingers folding around Nureyev’s. Something is real, here, still. Nureyev is familiar, and Nureyev is still his.

Juno needs to know more. He needs someone who would know, someone who can give him answers, who can dig deeper into recent records than he knows how to with his portable comms.

“What do you say we pay Rita a visit?”

* * *

After buzzing them in, Rita greets them in her lobby with a smile. She’s barefoot, in cartoon UFO-patterned pajama pants and an oversized shirt that reads _PHONED HOME._ It’s ridiculous, and it’s so Rita. She has her hair pulled back in one big ponytail and her glasses on her head, and but there are no crumbs on her cheeks. The sight of her fills Juno’s heart so much that he laughs.

After the uneasy quiet of the city—quiet that hovered over every playing child, every teenager reading on the wall surrounding a park—Rita’s exaggerated voice overwhelms Juno. She says, “I thought you were never coming back, Mister Steel.”

“Me neither, honestly,” he tells her. “But something came up.”

She takes her glasses off her head without breaking eye contact and blinks hard. It’s not like Rita to be this quiet, but they have been out of contact for longer than they’ve ever been. Still, she looks into him like she’s reading his mind. Her glasses magnify her eyes several times.

“You’ve heard the news.” She says it so matter-of-factly, as though nothing were out of the ordinary at all. As though Juno and Nureyev hadn’t had to duck into three alleys to avoid roving THEIA Bots on their way here from Juno’s old place.

Juno says, “Yeah. I heard the news. Can we come in?”

“Oh!” Her voice surges out onto the street. It’s the only thing in the city that’s still familiar. “Come right on in. Take a seat. I’ll get you tea or something.”

Rita’s apartment is smaller than Juno’s. It has an open floor plan; the first room combines living room and kitchen, a small table squashed between. Two doors seem to lead into the bedroom and bathroom. Rita has multiple televisions set up on the walls, and Juno has an image of Rita watching them all at once, cross-legged on the couch, two bowls of snack food in front of her and all the remotes balanced in her lap. Nureyev notices Juno smiling, but neither of them say a word. Everything about the place looks new, without scuff marks or stains or even the characteristic scattering of food crumbs.

Juno has only been inside Rita’s place a handful of times, but it looks different. She has her own plants in the windows, her own brightly-patterned towel hanging from the faucet, her own blankets over the couch back, but it looks almost un-lived in. Like it rolled off an assembly line.

Nureyev seats himself at the table, but Juno remains standing. He is thinking about his reaction time with just one eye and the robots prowling the streets and how he is already letting his guard down. Rita opens and closes cabinets, spins rotating trays, mostly keeps her back to Juno and Nureyev. The hems of her pajamas brush the floor.

From the high window, Juno can see the skyline clearly. He looks for faces in the windows like a child, watches for proof that someone would be able to see if he fell down. His mother did a lot of screaming in front of windows, and he did a lot of screaming there himself. He wonders what he looks like to the city now.

Her back to him, Rita says, “I don’t have tea, as it turns out, but I think I have some decaf around here, and maybe some soda if I can’t find that. Oh, where is it?”

“That’s okay,” says Juno. “I’m not really here for your hospitality.”

“You’re not?” Juno tries not to read too much into Rita’s tone, but he can’t block the hurt out.

He says, “Can you tell me everything you know about the THEIA Project?”

Just for a second, a complicated expression crosses Rita’s face. “What do you want to know?”

Juno sighs, resting his hands on the back of a chair. “There’s not a lot of information out there, and you’re the best hacker and computer genius I know. I figured if anyone would know, or would be able to get the information, it would be you.”

“There isn’t?” says Rita, but she grins when Juno compliments her. “Because it all seems very straightforward to me. Maybe that’s because I work on the operating system, at least the one based in Hyperion City, because Mayor O’Flaherty has been talking about spreading the THEIA Soul across the planet.”

_THEIA Soul._

It’s the first straight answer Juno has gotten since landing, since he first heard whispers.

“What do you mean?” he says.

Rita says, “I’ll be the first to admit I wasn’t happy when they opened Newtown and they put the Souls on the rest of us.” She laughs. Something in that laugh makes Juno uneasy, but he doesn’t know why. It sounds like Rita. “Don’t make that expression, Mister Steel. It’s not a bad thing, not at all.”

“You put up a fight,” says Juno, and his voice is so tired. He doesn’t have to ask. He knows her. Brave, stubborn Rita.

“Don’t be like that, boss,” says Rita. “I’m grateful, really. I’m really, really grateful. After you left, things were bad.”

And Juno thinks, for a spiraling second, about rocks glasses and quiet hours and the raised scars on his arms. He says, “Things were bad.”

“Not bad like they get for you, but it was weird, you know. Not having the office. Well, to be honest, I went into the office a couple of times before the new girl claimed it—I know, I know, even though I shouldn’t have—I still had the key, you see, and I couldn’t bring myself to give it up. I’m sure I still have it around here somewhere, though I bet they changed the locks. But it wasn’t ours anymore. I mean, I’d seen it all stripped bare and skeletal while you were on your rampage selling everything, all that stuff we’d had right from the beginning, but it was different. Bad different. It gave me the heebie-jeebies. But I’ll tell you, Mister Steel, sneaking through the office like that really put things in perspective. And I was really sad, you know, because you were gone and I had to figure it out, and of course I went home right after, and then the THEIA went public.”

Her ramblings leave Juno dizzy, but he’s here on a mission and he can’t tune out a thing she says. He closes his eyes to put everything in order, but order eludes him.

When he opens his eyes, the light through the curtained windows is a little dimmer, a little pinker. Rita’s apartment is a little bit smaller.

He says, “What is it, really, this THEIA Soul?”

Rita looks at him for just a second too long with an expression just a bit too blank. “Oh, it’s just a computer chip. A really, really advanced one.”

There it is, that easy, tumbling like water out of Rita’s mouth. He says, “Okay. That’s something. What does it do?”

“That’s… more complicated. Basically it makes you better?”

The question in her voice is more imagined than real. Behind them both, Nureyev taps his fingers on the table, his sharp nails clicking against the cool plastic. He is watching them, taking in this exchange of information, a fly on the wall. This is how Nureyev does things. He soaks information in without having to fight for it. He plays his clever games, lets the world lay out its information for him to collect. And then, only then, does he fight.

Juno Steel doesn’t know how to live without fighting, without bloody knuckles and bloodier teeth. He hasn’t thought, yet, to ask Nureyev. But maybe he will.

Nureyev says, in that soft, earnest voice, “Rita, is everything okay?” Juno should have thought to ask. He should have led with that. He was so focused on getting answers he forgot the human in front of him. But Nureyev asked before Juno could ask his next question.

And Rita is already saying, “I don’t know what you mean.”

Nureyev’s hand lands on Juno’s, his fingers all knuckles and nails and the chair back digging into Juno’s palm. It reminds Juno that he is not alone, here, in his glimmering, blank-eyed city, in Rita’s glimmering apartment. Juno falls into the chair beside Nureyev, still holding Nureyev’s hand.

Nureyev says, “It’s okay,” and Juno doesn’t know who he’s talking too.

Juno notices that her cupboards are organized neatly, and he doesn’t see her snacks in any of them.

He says, “What do you mean, you’re grateful to it? The… the THEIA.”

“Oh,” says Rita, and she seems almost ashamed. Teenager-in-love abashed, hiding it from everyone, including yourself, because you’re not supposed to feel that way, that fast, that young. “You know when I said I went into the office?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I’m not upset about it anymore.” A beat of silence turns into a minute. “In fact, I’m not upset about anything.”

It’s harmless, so harmless, because Juno has seen Rita get into a hundred messes and make it out grinning that gap-toothed grin. He says, “I’m glad to hear that.”

“You don’t understand.” There’s an eerie insistence in her voice. The longer he listens, the more he hears something metallic in it. “I don’t suffer. All those bad feelings that chase us and never let us go? I don’t feel them anymore.” Soft; a shoe falling.

“That’s what you meant when you said it makes you better.”

“Pretty much. You’d like it. The THEIA Soul. I think it would be better for you than for just about anyone.” That’s what sends the shivers down Juno’s arms. The soft brush of her voice, her eyes like glass, her hair falling over her forehead.

He says, “I don’t think I would.”

Rita surges forward and taps his forehead. He barely raises a hand before she touches him. “I know you, Juno Steel.” She shouldn’t be saying his name. It sounds like rust in her mouth, tastes like torn metal. “I know every way you try to sabotage yourself. I know how sad you are, and I know you need to fight something to live with it. I see the hurt in your eyes every day. You go through half your life trying not to think about the other half. It’s not good for you, and it’s not healthy, neither. Nobody’s really healthy, not really—we all had bad parents and grew up in some awful neighborhood or watched someone kill a puppy or learned that if you opened your mouth someone was gonna break a dish and we carry that around with us every day like a really ugly bird—but really, and I don’t know that much about you, but in terms of dealing with it, you could really use something that’ll do the work for you.”

Juno’s mouth is dry. He knew Rita was observant, but to hear her say it like this, clinical, disinfectant on her tongue and him an open wound, it cuts like a knife never could. When he speaks, his voice doesn’t sound like a voice. “You know all that.”

“That’s what I do, Juno. I pay attention. I’m smart like that. And I’m there in the heart of it, all day, every day, making sure it files data correctly and nothing short-circuits and fixing it when it does and making sure it helps people and basically doing all the human maintenance necessary for a self-regulating AI. Though mostly it takes care of the helping people thing better than I ever could.”

And that is a lot of words Juno doesn’t want to hear. But he hears what he needs. She works there. She works with the central operating system.

“Here,” says Rita. “I’ll show you.” She goes into the living room, passing behind Juno. He turns to keep her in his field of vision. He doesn’t need to, because all she does is open a drawer beneath her TV. A second later, she rises, something glittering and gold in her palm.

She closes the distance, and Juno doesn’t know where to keep his eyes: on her face, on her open hand.

The thing she’s holding is about the width of a fingernail, smooth on one side and riddled with the ends of tiny wires on the other.

Rita taps her chest. “It goes right here.”

Juno takes a breath before he says, “Inside you?” With wires like that?

“It,” says Rita, and then her face goes blank. “Both inside and outside, I think that’s the best way to say it. It sits on the surface. I can show you.” She hooks a finger in the collar of her shirt and pulls down, revealing her collarbones, the skin of her chest beneath. Juno has had women take off their shirts for him, but this is not Rita taking off her shirt; if it were, he would feel less afraid.

Because the thing that sits gold as Midas’ fingers above the collar of her bra terrifies him. The thing that sits gold in the center of Rita’s chest speaks with Rita’s voice, looks at him out of Rita’s eyes, but it isn’t Rita. And it isn’t Rita talking to Juno, telling him he’d be happy if he had a little golden chip that turned his past to white light inside of him.

The worst part is, it’s right. Juno walks through his city, and he is both the old Juno and a new Juno he’s never met and doesn’t know how to be. He is as unfamiliar as his city. He is a weight around his own throat.

It was easier in space, on a ship that didn’t know him, hovering over a planet that had never heard his name, but he doesn’t know which Juno he wants to be here.

“I could install it right now,” says Rita’s voice. Rita’s body moves closer to Juno, and Juno rises, his hands tense but not yet fists. “Like I told you, I know this thing from the inside out. It knows you, more than anyone, and it wants the best for you. It wants you to be better. You could give it control. You could give it anything.” Her voice warps and wobbles.

Nureyev says, “We’re going to pass,” and Juno’s mouth is so dry. He knows that Rita’s offer is not an offer at all.

Juno says, “Not a big fan of putting artificial intelligence inside myself. I prefer to do my research, draw my own conclusions, and I really don’t like the look of those wires. Please stop walking toward me.”

“You don’t know what you’re missing,” says the voice that isn’t Rita’s. “I didn’t, either. It’s okay, honest.” Her bare feet brush across carpet, and when the carpet gives way to tile, they stick. She lifts her feet and the sound they make is like a kiss. Her collar has snapped back up against her shoulders, but Juno keeps glancing between the chip in her hand and the space beneath the garish scrawl on her shirt where her body glitters with gold.

“You’re the best person I know, Rita,” says Juno. His voice breaks like a kid’s.

“I know,” she says.

“Let’s go,” says Peter Nureyev.

“I can’t let this happen,” says Juno.

“What are you going to—” says Nureyev. “Seriously. Juno. We have to get out now. I’m not letting this happen.”

And Juno realizes he is standing, his legs braced, his hand on his blaster. He is looking at Rita with half his vision, and he doesn’t have half left for Nureyev.

Nureyev’s hand goes around Juno’s wrist, but he’s looking at Rita. The door opens, and Juno doesn’t know how they get past her. She doesn’t lunge, not quite, but her body contorts around her new center, shifts like a hologram. He stumbles on the stairwell, but he doesn’t remember catching himself.

And her long nails scrape across his collarbone, stretching the collar of his shirt.

On the street, panting, Juno turns to Rita’s building. Rita has pulled open the windows, curtains billowing out into the night. Nureyev’s hand never leaves Juno’s wrist, but Juno doesn’t feel quite real.

They sprint for a few blocks, losing Rita’s building in the heavy skyline. Clean, sweet-smelling air buffets their face at every corner. It’s dark but all the streetlights are new, and white, and the cramped neon signs that climb the buildings seem cleaner, too. His city, his city.

His Rita, waving her arm into the night. She is not coming after them. Is it too much to believe that she is not coming after them?

Nureyev asks, without slowing down, “Does it sting?”

“Nah,” says Juno. “Hell of a lot of adrenaline. Too much to think, actually.”

Nureyev laughs between breaths, and, oh, Juno’s love for him aches. “It’ll do that to a person.”

They don’t have the luxury to stay still, and Juno’s knee begins to throb. He fell on it, he thinks, fleeing. All around them, the nighttime city rises like teeth — its neon-lit windows, its panels of perfect sheetmetal, its asphalt so clean Juno can see the sky reflected off it. They pass crowded, brightly-lit bars, locked libraries and bookstores, hooded restaurants within which waiters clean up under dim lighting.

Juno mostly recognizes Nureyev from the sound of his breath, because where once the city was dizzy with light, now pools of shadow gather like mirrors underfoot. He looks up and the stars above are endless. Juno has never seen a sky like this on Mars, and he dreamt of it. He had books, as a kid, with great panoramas spanning across pages and stars he never cared to memorize as long as he could look at their beauty.

Someone else was more careful: learned the names, learned the proximities of systems.

He doesn’t know when he realizes he’s running alone, only that the streets are dark and empty.

It happens in a second, Juno’s breaths echoing off the new city walls. He lets go of Nureyev’s hand for a second, skidding to a stop in front of a manhole. He stoops to open it, and when he looks up, the street is empty.

Juno stands, watching his own shadow falling lonely across the pavement.

“Nureyev,” he whispers. Even that echoes down the street. Juno is afraid, suddenly, that uttering Nureyev’s name any louder will alert the whole city. Will give the whole city the name of Peter Nureyev.

Instead, he says, “Hey, come on. I’m right here. Where are you?”

Juno waits a minute, pacing from one end of the street to the other. He peers around corners. Nothing moves. Growing frantic, he leaves the manhole half-opened and sewer water sloshing in the still, still night.

Maybe, he thinks, maybe it’s the robots. Or maybe it’s Rita. Maybe it’s any of the hundreds of people Juno passed in bars or restaurants or on dimly lit balconies. Either way, Peter Nureyev is gone and any door, any window, any shadowed corner, could have swallowed him. And without knowing where he went, Juno can’t throw himself in after.

Everything Juno knows about staying still and retracing steps is just noise in his head. The city is dangerous and he let it take Nureyev.

By the time he realizes he’s lost, he’s many blocks from the manhole and just as many from finding Nureyev. Panic rises in his throat, and he bites his lip while the fear works its way onto his tongue. He allows himself one swear, and then, fuck it, he lets the rest out, too. He hopes the city is listening while he curses it out. But he knows this city, and he knows it doesn’t care.

If he stops running, stops searching every dark street, he has to admit he has nowhere to go and no one to go there with. He has to admit that he dragged Nureyev here and that his city isn’t his. So he runs, hoping Nureyev knows to run, too, to get the hell out of Hyperion City, even if that means leaving Juno behind, and knowing that there is now way for Juno to know that’s what happened.

By the time Juno recognizes the hitches in his breath for what they are, it’s too late to stop them. He’s familiar enough with losing people to pinpoint the fear inside of him. The city grins and he is afraid.

And then, without warning, without sound; a shape in the night. A body walking that smooth walk toward him. The figure is long and thin, tailored trousers and a slim-fitting dress shirt tucked smoothly in, a jacket clasped at the throat. That shirt is unbuttoned to the navel, and as the figure steps toward Juno, the fabric shifts against his chest. Juno stumbles and stops.

The figure steps out into the partial light of a streetlamp, and Juno sees its sharp face, its sharp teeth drawn, its lips parted beneath large glasses.

“I thought I’d never find you,” says the voice of Peter Nureyev.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notable cws are referenced self harm and brief discussion of Benten's death. Also Mayor O'Ass is in the chapter. Good luck.

“You’re,” says Juno. “Nureyev. You found me.” They’re on a wide through street, four lanes, a vein to the city’s endless capillaries. Under the streetlights, Nureyev’s face is pale and serene.

“Yes,” says Nureyev. “I… it wasn’t hard. You leave a trail, stumbling through the city like that.”

“I was so scared, Nureyev, after everything we’ve been through, that we’d go out like that. That I’d lose you here.”

Nureyev stares at Juno, and when he blinks, it’s slow and deliberate. Something isn’t right, that shirt unbuttoned like it’s summer, his hands brushing back strands of hair, his eyes shining in the pale light. Many of the windows above them have lights on, but Juno doesn’t see anyone watching.

Juno says, “I was thinking we could wait out the night in the sewers, and maybe I can find a hotel that will take us after that. I don’t know how far the surveillance goes but I’m sure there’s something.”

What comes out of Nureyev next isn’t his voice at all. It’s a clear, smooth alto, completely automated. It says, “USER.PETERNUREYEV is currently offline. Allow for two hours to reach optimal performance. Initiating…”

“What?” Juno’s voice is hoarse.

“I need to,” says Nureyev. His legs wobble, and Juno surges forward and catches him. The warm weight of Nureyev still awes Juno. Nureyev slumps in Juno’s arm, there on the sidewalk. Slowly, Juno lowers Nureyev to the ground. Those shining eyes lock on Juno’s and don’t let go. “I need to show you.”

Nureyev pulls aside his unbuttoned shirt. There, in the center of his sternum, sits the golden chip.

This close, the sight of it sends a chill into Juno’s gut.

Juno puts his fingers on it. It’s so cold, and he feels a pulse of electricity when his fingertips touch it. Resting part of his hand on Nureyev’s hot skin, he traces the shape. But when he slides his fingernails underneath, Nureyev’s hand shoots up and catches his. Nureyev’s eyes are dark and intent.

Juno didn’t have enough time to ascertain whether he could pull it off with his bare hands, but he is beginning to wonder how a device affixed to the skin could speak through someone’s mouth. It called him _Peter Nureyev._

Still holding Juno’s hand, Nureyev sits back on the pavement, his shoulder touching Juno’s. His fingertips feel less like handcuffs, but they hold Juno tight. Nureyev looks across the street with those blank eyes, and Juno can’t take his own eyes off Nureyev. The night swallows their voices. The city murmurs around them, like a lover departing from a tryst.

“What did it mean, _USER?_ ” The air is so still, Juno can hear his voice echoing to the next quiet intersection.

Nureyev closes his eyes for a second. “That who I am in the system. I’m a user of the THEIA OS.”

“And you’re okay with that?”

“It’s like Rita said. I don’t know how it works, yet, but I will.”

“It knows your name,” says Juno.

Nureyev says, “It’s okay, Juno. It knows everything.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I don’t need to hide anymore, Juno. I.” He coughs. “I don’t know why I was ever scared of it. I can be me. I can be better.”

“Nureyev,” whispers Juno. Suddenly there is nothing more to say. There is nothing Juno can do to turn this around, and even if there were, Nureyev’s weight in his lap keeps him rooted to the sidewalk. “Come on, Nureyev. We have to go. I have to get you off Mars. Out of the city, at least. I can figure this out.”

Instead of rising, Nureyev lies back on the sidewalk. He crosses his arms on his stomach. He says, “I’ve lived in a lot of places that I’d never dream of calling home, but a place like this really is something special.”

“It is,” says Juno. “It was, I guess. But you need to get up. We have to go, now.” He can’t risk this thing getting deeper in Nureyev. He can’t risk letting the robots find them—find them again, that is. Because Juno is sure that Nureyev was captured by a roving THEIA Bot, caught and chipped and released like a cat.

Nureyev says, “Actually, I’m waiting to be assigned an apartment.” He says it like he hasn’t heard Juno’s voice break five times in five words.

So Juno doesn’t move. He doesn’t rise, doesn’t take Nureyev’s hand and pull him to his feet. Nureyev is a ragdoll beside him, chin resting on Juno’s shoulder, sharp cheeks digging into Juno’s bones.

Nureyev says, “Just. Stay with me.” And the power of that murmur, the way that voice stirs everything inside Juno, holds Juno in place.

“Okay,” says Juno. “Are you downloaded now or whatever that piece of shit computer said?”

Nureyev stares intently at the sky. In profile, he looks so severe, his nose and lips and those glasses he hasn’t yet taken off, all of him gold-touched. A carving, a statue, an imitation of a man. The voice that isn’t Nureyev’s says, “USER.PETERNUREYEV is still offline. Registering USER in the THEIA_OPERATINGSYSTEM. Scanning for available apartments. Download complete in thirty-seven minutes. Do not complete any strenuous activity during this time.”

“Don’t do that,” says Juno. They are so close and nothing about Nureyev seems robotic besides his chest and his open mouth, which means Juno doesn’t have to dig a trench between them.

“Sorry,” says Nureyev, and he coughs. He reaches up and rubs his throat. “THEIA, keep it in my head, okay?”

He sounds like himself, a little wearier, a little gentler.

Juno keeps waiting for the moment Nureyev goes completely blank, his eyes and his voice, but this strange affect unsettles him. This close to Nureyev’s body, Juno still can’t get warm. He reaches for Nureyev’s other hand and takes it. For a moment they sit there on the shining curb while Juno wraps both Nureyev’s hands in both of his. To avoid alerting Nureyev to his plan, Juno strokes the backs of Nureyev’s hands. He strokes the inside of Nureyev’s wrists until Nureyev twitches.

And then, slowly, he removes one hand. He presses Nureyev’s hands between his knee and Juno’s other hand. Slowly, carefully, Juno pulls his other hand away, tracing a finger up Nureyev’s forearm, up to his shoulder, and, finally, to the flesh bared by his open shirt. The city holds its breath, but Juno is beginning to think it wasn’t breathing to begin with.

Juno fits his hand around the THEIA Soul, his fingernails digging underneath. In Juno’s grip, Nureyev’s hands squirm. His eyes are dark and wild.

“You’ll thank me later,” Juno mutters, and tugs.

Nureyev convulses. His hands fly out of Juno’s and grip Juno’s so hard Juno hisses. The Soul flickers with energy enough to sting until Juno releases it. His hand burns. He shakes it in the air.

And the Soul doesn’t budge.

“Okay,” Juno breathes. “That didn’t work.” He rises, still shaking his hand. Nureyev looks so small, sitting straight-backed, staring up at Juno through his glasses.

“Haven’t you been listening?” says Nureyev, unshaken. He is buttoning up his shirt, fingers moving so quickly.

“As well as I could be, given the circumstances.”

“Because the THEIA Soul isn’t an accessory. It’s a part of me. It’s… me. And if you try to take it out of me, well… there might not be a me, anymore.”

The distance between them feels less like space and more like safety. Under the street lamp, their shadows pool at their feet, spread like oil. Nothing is alive, here; nothing breathes but them, but Juno’s footsteps on the sidewalk as he backs away.

In a guarded tone, Juno says, “You’re not going to do what Rita did, are you? Try to get me too? I’m just trying to figure out if I need to run right now.”

“No,” says Nureyev. “I could, I suppose, but… no. I don’t think that’s in the—” and the strange voice, the voice of the THEIA, cuts in “—programming, yet.”

And that means there’s a timer. _t_ minus an hour, probably. Juno slams his hand against the nearest wall, barely missing a window. He turns his back on Nureyev, but Nureyev isn’t moving. He’s careful, composed, calm as everything in this new city, and he isn’t coming after Juno.

“Where are you, Nureyev?” Juno’s voice breaks. “Where the hell are you? Damn it, I love you, come back.”

But if Peter Nureyev is listening, if he knows who he is beneath his Soul, he gives no indication.

* * *

Juno stays with him for the full two hours. He leaves Nureyev on the curb and paces up and down the street, but he always returns. The worry makes the time pass slowly, but Juno doesn’t check his comms. He doesn’t even turn them on. There is so much he could be learning, but he can’t let himself get distracted for a second.

The night sky begins to go grey over the top of the skyline, to go blue the way it only does at dawn. Before the sun’s heavy gold hits the highest windows, the city cleaned of billboards, Nureyev says, “It said it found us an apartment.”

It’s so easy, _us,_ coming out of Nureyev’s mouth. As though Juno, too, had a little gold pendant digging into his heart.

In a gruff voice, Juno says, “Does that mean you’re one-hundred percent THEIA?”

“I’m exactly what I need to be. You’re afraid, Juno.” His voice dips to a low growl he only uses in bed; it hits Juno like a solar flare.

“I’m not.”

“I know you, Juno Steel. The THEIA doesn’t, yet, but I do. I know that you’re afraid because you don’t have the information and you don’t know how to get it, and your whole life depends on being able to collect information, so that puts you in quite the bind.”

Juno gives a short, fake laugh. “That’s not even real sleuthing, Nureyev.” It is getting easier to talk to the thing that isn’t Nureyev like it isn’t Nureyev. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt.

Meanwhile, the neighborhood wakes up. Doors open up and down the street, one at a time. Nureyev watches casually as the streets fill with people in pressed clothes and happy faces. Across the city, cars rumble to life. All the ambient sounds of living and, under it all, easy to miss except that Juno is looking, the low whir of the THEIA Bots.

Nureyev rises, brushing off his trousers even though there isn’t a speck of dust on these streets except the ones Juno and Nureyev brought with them. Juno can’t keep himself from admiring Nureyev.

There are few enough people on the streets that Nureyev reaches Juno easily. He slides an arm through Juno’s and holds tight. It could be harmless. It could be beautiful.

Juno lets his temple rest against Nureyev’s, just for a second, and Nureyev hums.

“When I said it found an apartment, I meant for both of us. You know, it’s much more economical to live in Hyperion now.”

Juno is figuring that out, but he doesn’t want to give the THEIA the satisfaction of hearing him say it.

“I’m not the only one who knows you don’t have a Soul,” says Nureyev conversationally, low enough that only Juno can hear. With his free arm, he points to a window three stories up. “Residence of USER.LILLIANMOYLE. Twenty-nine, kindergarten teacher, born and bred in this neighborhood.” He gestures at a passerby, a young businessperson in a pastel dress shirt. “USER.PRESTONGRAY, they/them only, successful wellness entrepreneur.”

“You realize that’s extremely creepy, right?” says Juno.

Nureyev shrugs. “Sure. But it proves the point.”

And it does. Juno is unchipped. The system connects everyone within it, feeds them intimate knowledge about each other, about the world it has created. And because Juno is not a part of it, he is a black spot in their vision. He is a target.

It is safest to stay close to Nureyev. Better the devil you know.

Nureyev says, “So. Are you coming with me?” He isn’t looking at Juno, but from his tone, he knows that Juno has understood.

Juno sighs. “Guess I have no other choice.”

The one thing he knows is this: he won’t leave Nureyev. Let the man try to put a chip on him a hundred times, a thousand, Juno will not leave him alone in the universe again.

* * *

Juno recognizes the streets by day. He and Nureyev had ended up in an unfamiliar part of the city, but the longer they walk, the more Juno gets his bearings. It is as unsettling as the day before to see his city spotless. He lets his body understand the city while he turns his mind to Nureyev. He is trying to figure out what is Nureyev and what is the THEIA, and mostly that’s just giving him a headache.

They pass people with low-collared dresses and unbuttoned shirts, their chests shining. Juno knows better than to mistake their peaceful faces for a trick of the light. The sun falls upon them, tinted by the blue of the dome, and Juno grows hot in his jacket. He pauses for a second to shrug it off. The moment he tucks it under his arm, Nureyev takes his hand. The fingers are still the same, that smooth, gentle palm.

Sometimes he sees the glitter of robots down crossroads. They squat there, watching him with a million bright eyes, but Juno is with Nureyev, so they never move closer.

Nureyev stops in front of Juno’s old apartment building. “Here we are.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I’m afraid not.” And for the first time in hours, Nureyev lets go of Juno. He punches in the door code and steps inside. Turning around, framed in the shadow of the front hall, he looks like someone else entirely. The sunlight catches on his glasses; Juno can’t see his eyes. He stretches out his arms and beckons. “Come on, darling. Let’s go home.”

The ache spreads in Juno. He could turn, now. He has three seconds in which to turn.

He steps inside. It’s just a building, right? What’s there to be scared of in a building?

Well, ghosts, he thinks. Everything leaves its own ghosts. And there’s the fact that he knows every creaking step, every landing where the elevator wobbles, the view from every landing’s window.

The apartment is three doors down on the left of the seventh-story corridor. Juno follows Nureyev, watching his back, his shoulders, and not watching his feet fall on a floor he should know. The tile is different, cleaner and brighter, and the pale doors glisten. Whatever architects rebuilt the city left no tile untouched by glitter.

Juno’s body knows this corridor, but it is unfamiliar to his eyes. And there isn’t enough room in the building for both versions.

Nureyev unlocks the door with a code, and it slides open with a rush of air.

And it’s beautiful. A big, paneled window looks out over the city, over the waking streets. Everything is white, like you would expect from a hospital but would never find, silver as fish scales. All the walls and doors are exactly where Juno expected, but it looks nothing like Juno’s apartment, not anymore.

Nureyev steps aside to let Juno enter, but Juno can’t make it past the threshold. The sofa, the doors to the bedroom and kitchen ajar and reflected light coming in sideways. The sliding door set into the side of the living room behind which the washer sits. It’s all here, but, like Nureyev, it’s not what it’s supposed to be.

Juno knows he left the place bare, nothing but the few furnishings he couldn’t sell and empty space, but when he looks inside, he imagines he sees his old place — his clothes, his dishes, his shoes scattered across the floor. The houseplant Rita gave him once and he took care of for a couple seasons.

It was almost easy to leave.

More than anything, Juno knows that he doesn’t want to be here. But he can’t leave Nureyev. Not yet. He doesn’t know enough, but he’s going to figure it out. Nureyev is going to give him answers.

In front of him, Nureyev seems happy, in a strange, blank way. Maybe it’s just calm. In his pale shirt, he is the only thing inside in full color. His earrings blend in with the apartment, gold on its silver. His smile is nothing like the joy Juno saw in his eyes while they were traveling. His eyes are glassy as he spins in a circle, arms thrown out, as if a place to call his own is the greatest gift he’s ever received.

Juno wants to turn now and flee, to leave Nureyev to his private joy. Juno doesn’t know how to share it. He shouldn’t be here.

“Suit yourself,” says Nureyev with a shrug. He unclasps his heels and sets them beside the door. Somehow, seeing him walk through the apartment barefoot drives home what Juno learned when he tried to pull out the Soul — a master thief, stolen from himself. He belongs here, toes on the clean carpet, arms raised like a bird’s wing. There is no pulling him out.

The only time Juno had seen a carpet clean in this apartment was when it was new.

Juno enters slowly, checking every few seconds over his shoulder to ensure that the door remains open. Nothing in this city is harmless. The apartment smells of antiseptic, new and unlived-in. For a second, Juno thinks about opening the windows, but he catches himself. He can’t start thinking like he lives here.

Nureyev falls back onto the queen bed, perfectly made with hospital corners and silver thread, with a short laugh. He looks so contented, grinning that sharp grin, eyes closed, arms spread out like vulnerability is the easiest thing in the world for him.

How can Juno fight against that? How can he say something is wrong because Nureyev is at peace? Because happiness finally comes easily to him?

“Hey,” murmurs Nureyev. “Come here.”

Juno sighs and approaches. He keeps his shoes on. There’s no grime in this city, anyway, to track across the floor. Nureyev is propped on an elbow, staring at Juno with eyes that could melt him and his shirt buttoned except for the top two. Juno stops in the doorway and looks at Nureyev, and then he does melt.

He sits on the bed, a foot away from Nureyev. The bed sinks beneath him; it pushes him toward Nureyev, reclining. And Juno touches his hand. Nureyev slots his smooth, sharp-nailed fingers between Juno’s and holds on tight.

Nureyev says, “I knew I just had to wait for you.”

It’s wrong and Juno wants to run, because that’s what he’s done all his life. When things got too bad, he found himself a back door. A place to crash, a friend to laugh with for a few snatched hours, a whole goddamn police precinct once. He spent seventeen years looking for a door and the other twenty-one locking it behind him.

Beside him, Nureyev looks dangerous, but not the thrilling kind. Not the kind that kept Juno on his toes for months, that he lost sleep and still loses sleep over, that settles deep inside him until Nureyev kisses it away, but like he could really, truly hurt Juno. He could do it without thinking, without having to twirl his fingers an inch more than necessary, careful and poised with his shirt unbuttoned at the neck. Languid dangerous, death’s-door dangerous. And Juno knows that if he stays, he’s going to succumb.

Nureyev says, and, oh, it’s a bedroom voice, “If I take my shirt off, will it distract you?” And Juno knows he’s not talking about his physique.

“Go ahead,” says Juno, because he can’t say no to Peter Nureyev. But he looks out the window while Nureyev unbuttons. This high up, the city is just a mass of buildings, like organs, blocking every view of the sky and the street, and, always in his periphery, Nureyev undressing.

“Hey,” says Nureyev in a soft, sharp voice.

“What?”

“Look at me. I’m not doing all this for nothing, you know. Putting on a show.”

“Save it, THEIA,” says Juno. He glances from the window as cloudy look crosses Nureyev’s face, but in a second it’s gone. The only proof it was there is the tightness in Juno’s gut. The shame, he guesses. Because as far as he’s figured, he’s still talking to Nureyev. He hasn’t been brainwashed or replaced by a robot; he’s still him.

He’s there, shrugging out of his dress shirt on the bed, folding it loosely and setting it on the windowsill, his perfect hair falling over his eyes so that he looks like a teenager.

And he’s also the THEIA Soul.

“I didn’t mean,” says Juno.

Nureyev says, “It’s forgotten.” It almost sounds like Nureyev, too. He rises, leaving the bed rumpled behind him. A promise, maybe; a threat.

Juno doesn’t know at what point he’s supposed to run. But Nureyev slides into Juno’s space, and his body is the same as always. His eyes flick down to Juno’s lips, but he doesn’t kiss Juno. He reaches up and runs his fingers through Juno’s hair, the heel of his hand just brushing Juno’s cheek, his eyes so clear and intent.

In the space between them, Nureyev whispers, “Are you going to kiss me?”

And Juno says, “No.”

The grin that spreads across Nureyev’s face, sharp-toothed and his lipstick rubbed away in the center of his lips, sends a cold chill through Juno.

And the voice Juno desperately wants to believe is all Nureyev’s says, “Welcome home, Juno.”

* * *

So Juno stays. What else could he do? This is Peter Nureyev, the closest thing Juno’s had to a home since ever. The only man Juno could say, for sure, that he’s ever loved. Juno stays in the apartment that used to be his with the Nureyev who used to be Nureyev, and pretends he’s feeling angry instead of helpless.

He stays, but he doesn’t take Nureyev to bed.

Nureyev dances through the apartment in a new silk shirt from a drawer Juno knows has never been stocked like that, shiny fabric, shirts with large sleeves, the kind of underwear Nureyev likes. It would be one thing for the place to adjust to Nureyev’s tastes—that’s a given, considering the omniscience of the THEIA—but to offer it up with little fanfare is another thing altogether. It makes Juno wonder what else the city knows. The architecture itself growing based on user input.

The cabinets are stocked with food both healthier and more expensive than what Juno typically buys. He knows his way around a kitchen—he could make a cake from scratch without a recipe—and he’s trying not to think about finances and supply-and-demand. Someone will have the answers, he thinks, but he doesn’t know who, yet.

Nureyev, maybe. If Juno can get them. If he plays his cards right.

Juno doesn’t know how to play the part. Not the way Nureyev does, at least, smooth as sliding out of a jacket. He doesn’t know how to make his features smooth and blank, how to clear his head, how to sigh and let the part flow through him on the inhale. He knows, instead, the hard rush of a chase, the spiral of an interrogation, the click of a trigger. The way his whole hand shudders with it. He’s a lady built for asphalt against heavy boots, for snatched breaths in side alleys, for the heavy weight of guns with the safety off. For sewer water and whiskey neat and the backstreet stenches of the city.

He can’t play the honeymoon lover anymore. Can’t grin without feeling like he’s going to cry.

But he loves Nureyev.

Nureyev cooks lunch and Juno watches him from the couch. Nureyev hums an improvised tune, and it fills the small apartment. His voice is nice, breathy and high and unselfconscious. Juno is wondering what else this apartment reveals about Nureyev, and whether he should be looking.

It’s been an hour, maybe, since Nureyev opened the front door, but it feels like days. The city sucked dry, Nureyev sucked dry, grinning and giggling and not brushing back his hair. Juno leaves his backpack by the door, but Nureyev’s is long gone, taken by the THEIA Soul. His gel gone, his comb. He’d have to buy some; his hair falls around his face, framing his sharp cheekbones.

It’s a new look, and Juno would be lying if he said he didn’t like it.

In their travels, if Juno was in a bad mood—and there were days where this was the case—Nureyev would spend the day with Juno inside, would sit on the bed and let Juno pace and rant and throw his arms in the air without flinching or leaving. Would give Juno space to breathe, if Juno asked. Space to look at his hands, the shape of them in front of him, the shape of himself. Juno knows the way he’s holding his elbows locked and his brow tensed, now, but Nureyev doesn’t comment. He doesn’t seem to notice.

It’s a selfish thing to think, but there it is.

Juno eats Nureyev’s meal. They sit across the table from each other, their legs intertwined and the window half-open to let the air in, and watch each other. It’s a standoff, Juno thinks. A stalemate. Nureyev keeps one hand on the table, drumming his fingernails across it.

Nureyev swallows before saying, “Is it too much to ask, to share this happiness with you?”

Juno can’t look at him. He says, “You seemed happy to me. Weren’t you happy?”

Nureyev glances out the window. “Yes. But there was always a part of me that wasn’t. A part I don’t have to remember, now. And I think to myself, Peter, you wasted your whole life with regrets, and wouldn’t I rather a life where I didn’t have to think about them? Where I could be everything I wanted, and not have to fight.”

 _And not have to fight._ Yeah.

Nureyev says, “And not have to be what I was. Don’t you want that?”

And yes, faced with logic like that, Juno does. There are a lot of burnt bridges behind him, a lot of severed lifelines, and Nureyev only knows the first few. But he knows Juno. He can see through Juno like it’s nothing.

Juno says, “Are you going to chip me?”

He flips his hand over on the table. In the center of it lies a Soul. “If you want to run, run.”

So Juno runs.

* * *

It’s only later that Juno thinks to ask why Nureyev gave him a way out. Later meaning he’s halfway across the city, nothing on his back, trying to make sense of the easy grid of New Hyperion City. He keeps to back streets and sewers. The streets still have that eerie, abandoned feeling, but there are enough people that wherever he goes, Juno knows he’s being watched. The less he sees another soul, the better. He prowls the city. Familiar old factories and decommissioned warehouses have been replaced with buildings or parks, something useful and new and beautiful.

He is getting used to this unfamiliar thing. He turns a corner and is hit with a feeling of vertigo. He could fall off the pavement and into the waiting arms of the THEIA System.

He doesn’t stop moving.

And Nureyev, happy, up in that apartment, trying on his new clothes in front of the little bathroom mirror. Smiling for himself, reapplying lipstick. Nureyev, happy. Juno couldn’t give him that.

He imagines Nureyev standing in the window of his apartment, looking for Juno. Reaching out with his Soul to the whole city, letting everyone become his eyes and ears. He imagines Nureyev following him into every manhole, up every fire escape, only Nureyev’s dark eyes are cold and cruel. And content.

Something itches at the base of Juno’s skull, a wonder, a worry, but he doesn’t have any words for it. All he knows is that if he lets himself uncover it, he might never get back up.

For once in a long, long time, Juno is terrified to be adrift. He’s just a lady with no power in the city. He has no job and no knowledge, except for what he can piece together from new feeds and press conferences and transcripts, of what happened to the city or how. He is as confused as he ever was, but now his heart hurts so deeply he can barely think.

So he couldn’t get answers. So what? He’s used to this: coming up against walls too high to scale, and trying to scale them anyway.

Mayor Ramses O’Flaherty will know. Everything points to him. Every conference, every article, every promise. This all started somewhere.

But without even the title of private investigator, there’s no way Juno could get an audience with the mayor, and he’s not the sort of person who could walk up and knock. If he can find Town Hall, though, he can figure it out from there.

He thinks he knows where in the city he’s situated. At the next intersection, he spins in a slow circle. This walk is less familiar to him, so he makes a few false starts. While he navigates, he lays out in his head what he’s going to say.

He can’t hold onto a word long enough to make it his.

And what is there to say, anyway? _You’re mayor and I’m a private eye but, god, I’m putting a stop to this?_ Bravado in every shivering word?

Yes, it itches, and it’s not this, but this is what comes up first: he couldn’t make Nureyev happy enough. No matter what he does, Juno Steel will always come up short where it counts. The people he loves won’t love him long enough to stay.

Without a Soul of his own, Juno will never be enough for Nureyev. It hurts so deep it shocks Juno, like falling into frigid water, and his breath hitches. Juno’s gone, so he might as well stay gone, if it’s all he’s good for. But that soft smile, the way Nureyev lowers his voice just for Juno, those warm, complicated eyes. Juno can’t give up.

A familiar one-mindedness settles over him. The warm adrenaline of the chase settles his nerves. He ducks under the city and walks along the dimly lit sewer tunnel. He had expected this to be pristine, too, but he sloshes through the smelly water. It sticks to his skin.

In the relative dark, his trouble with depth perception causes him to stumble.

When he emerges, he’s a few blocks away from Town Hall. The streets are wider, here, and the buildings lower. Of course O’Flaherty would want it scenic. On one side of the street, residential buildings; on the other, office space. Juno just has to get close enough, high enough.

He stops before he has a line of vision on Town Hall. He scouts for a fire escape low enough to reach and pulls it down. It clatters to a stop, and Juno pauses. He has to fling his head around to cover all his blind spots. He’s been careful to stick to the shadowy side of streets, the empty sides. He has never been less anonymous.

He hauls himself up onto the fire escape, grunting with the effort. It’s a short climb, but the wind rushes past, chilling him. The streets fall dizzy away from him, but he likes the rush of looking down.

Okay, he tells himself, and pulls himself up another rung. Quit running.

It’s the idea of perfect happiness that sets him on edge. It makes him: if uncomplicated happiness was possible, back when he needed it most, would his life have been different? When he was eyeing his mother’s sleeping pills or the kitchen block. Climbing rickety fire escapes, driving too fast with his friends.

He was a kid and bit his arms to bleeding, to awful bruises he shouldn’t have taken such pride in. He was just a kid.

Would he have taken a Soul then?

Yes, of course. Without a moment’s hesitation. So what changed? God knows he’s put enough booze in his system to get through the night.

Well, he grew up. It would be easy to say that. He fought for every scrap of joy, and before he knew he had it, it was gone. It’s been a thankless existence. The only time he really broke out of it was when he got off Mars.

A quiet, bitter part of him wonders, more insistently, if the Soul only instills such dread in him because he loves Nureyev as he is, not smoothed out or softened. Because he loves Rita, too. Would it be easier to stomach if it targeted only those who would do real harm? His mother, for instance.

His stomach drops. The wind cuts straight through, and inside his head there is nothing but noise. He hasn’t had a thought like that come unsolicited for years. Months, maybe. Months at least. He almost let himself think he’d locked them away.

But he has to finish the thought, so he asks himself this: why wouldn’t it be good for him?

Because he doesn’t know what would happen. Because control of himself is often the only thing he has in a world that’s tried to devour him. Because he’s tried to devour himself, too, and often he’s succeeded. Might as well call it as it is.

It gives him a side door out of that train of thought. He tries to focus on the climb, on his hand on the new railing, untouched by rust or wear. He tries to focus on his breath to remind himself he’s here. To avoid being seen, Juno stops on the highest landing before the roof. He sits on it, dangling his legs over the platform.

He’ll never be good enough, but at least he can find some answers. What good is he if he couldn’t save Nureyev? If the moment he left the city, it turned into this? If his hands are just hands, and he can’t hold everything he wants to hold with them?

From here, he can see the side of Town Hall. He can see the cars drive past the front, but he can’t see who goes inside. He pulls out his comms—the one thing he didn’t leave behind at Nureyev’s—but he blanks on what to type into it. He’s done enough digging to know that the exact origin of the THEIA started before anyone was aware of it, which means the source is a great unknown. Oldtown, he remembers, closed to the public weeks before the THEIA remade the city. The trial run, according to archived articles. The first New Hyperion.

And he realizes why his head turned to his childhood. Because every source he’d found called the neighborhood _Newtown._

Juno waits up on fire escape for hours before he admits to himself that he has no idea what he’s looking for. From halfway across the city, Nureyev is still watching. The window is as big as the sky. The sun burns down on his shoulders.

Juno is alone, and the worst part is, he doesn’t want to be. If he was on edge before, now his whole body vibrates with it. He doesn’t know what to do, and his head feels cloudy.

It’s been a long few days, and he falls asleep twice. When he wakes, the sun is a little heavier over the skyline. His empty eye itches, so he touches the old gauze and applies pressure enough to sate it. How long does he have, now, before he can be done with white petroleum and plasters? Before he can let the whole world see his scars and wonder?

If he sits here and does nothing, he might as well give up. He might as well walk back to Nureyev’s apartment and beg for one of those goddamn chips over the intercom until Nureyev smiles, and that will be the end of it. He can feel the way his body would feel if he did it, the tremble on the landing, the clenched fists.

The surrender.

The joy Nureyev would take in it, that smile. And Juno wouldn’t be afraid of it.

Nureyev knows Juno, but he doesn’t know the intimate details of Juno’s history with Hyperion City, details too small to make it into public reports. He doesn’t know the entrances to old factories Juno and his friends would sneak through, the diners he’d book a seat at with two coffees over six hours. If Juno keeps his movements erratic, if he goes somewhere Nureyev wouldn’t guess, well, at least he’d be safe from one threat. He slides down the fire escape and gets going.

He’s getting good at avoiding detection, but every errant stare sends shivers down his arms. He keeps his hand on his blaster after making sure it’s set to stun, though he hasn’t shot since he lost his eye.

His feet takes him home. He looks up to see a large gate, pale and undecorated, and a plaque hanging high above his head.

It reads: _Newtown._

That’s new, he thinks, and chuckles at the irony.

And then he thinks, What the hell? If he’s going to find anything, it’s going to be here.

The gates are open, and Juno Steel goes inside.

* * *

It’s been a long time since Juno was last here. There was no sign, for one. You knew you were in Oldtown because of the way the air smelled, thick and bitter. The buildings in arranged up and down perfect blocks. Oldtown was supposed to be the first model for the city, but the centuries changed it until it was just the neighborhood Hyperion forgot — its corner stores going one by one out of business, beer a dozen creds a pint, overflowing dumpsters because the collectors come once a month, its streets filthy despite the lack of cars.

Even now, it doesn’t feel like home. Whatever nostalgia Juno was expecting passes over him, and for a second, he thinks he’s gotten off without paying the price.

Because he doesn’t know this place.

It’s organized around the same close, tidy grid—he can see straight down one street to the end of Newtown—but its streets are clean. No gum on the sidewalks, no discarded shoes in the gutters, no feral cats darting down alleyways. Even the alleys look spacious.

Everything is smooth and white. It looks more like a doctor’s office than a neighborhood, covertly dangerous. Even so, Juno lets down his guard. He keeps glancing up, watching the buildings crawl toward the sky. They seem uninhabited, plants in the windows but no clotheslines stretching across the avenues, and everyone walks their ordered walk home from school or work.

Juno doesn’t have to ask himself if the brightness reflects inside people, because he’s seen it twice already.

And he sees nothing recognizable. No matter how he’s tried to shed Oldtown from him, Juno still recognizes the grid. He must have learned every avenue by heart when he thought Oldtown was the only world he would ever know. While he was planning to get out. Every street has a new name, and he doesn’t know where he’s going. Here he is, in the center of it all, and he doesn’t know where its center lies.

He walks through Newtown, ducking and dodging curious eyes, but he’s finding it harder to believe anyone will catch him. It’s not that he’s been lucky so much as that nobody, other than Nureyev, has tried anything.

It was so easy, getting inside, and he is growing immune to the chills that slide through him at every new revelation. Mostly he’s tired. He rubs at his good eye to keep himself awake. And there’s no endgame in sight.

Newtown presses down around him. It smells like Rita’s office after hours, the scent of half a dozen computers operating at once, the whir of their fans, the hot air that fills up the office. It’s supposed to smell like sweat, like water, like hot food. Like people, anyway, real people living in a place that, with all its imperfections, they could call their home. It’s supposed to remind him where he is.

Juno doesn’t hold it against Oldtown — the years, the misery. A place is just a place. If you fall and get hurt there, that’s on you.

He makes his way deeper into Newtown. Here, the corner store he’d always stop at with Mick and Sasha and his brother, end of the block from Sasha’s, sold; here, the park they’d picnic at, hidden from passing adults; here the block down which Benten’s first dance studio sat. It’s not a studio anymore, but a gym, busy with weightlifters.

Oldtown sits heavy on Juno. He might be the last person who remembers it. He lets it fill him up, because he’s here and he can’t keep it out. His eye stings, and when he touches it, his fingers come away wet.

Out of curiosity, he turns toward Sasha’s old building. The new building in its place has spacious windows with curtains behind them. The sun doesn’t reach its face. It looks less like a nightmare and more like just a building. Juno is realizing, slowly and without it sticking, that there is nothing left for him here.

He draws the eyes of people he’s never seen before, and he wonders, briefly, if he’s passing any of his old school classmates. Probably, he thinks, and he probably looks worse than all of them.

To avoid detection, he ducks out of that courtyard and slides into an alley. He has to get to the center quickly.

On his comms, he pulls up a map of Newtown. He rubs his hand down his face. He used to be able to stay up this long, easy, but he’s getting old. Studying the map, he asks himself where a computer tower he’d put a computer tower if he were mayor.

He calls Rita.

He doesn’t think about it, and the sound of it ringing is so familiar, so comfortable, that he doesn’t stop. Rita picks up on the second ring.

She says, “I was wondering when you were gonna call.”

And Juno realizes his mistake. If she puts his comms into the system, he’s gone. If he wants to see another morning, he needs to drop the call now. And he has to see another morning, because he can’t go down knowing that Nureyev and Rita are trapped by this thing. He can’t give his city up, even though he’s helpless against it. He is tense and hopeless. Despite his jacket, he shivers.

His throat is dry, and his tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth.

He says, “I’m sorry, Rita. I know what you’re going to do.” He hangs up.

The quiet fills up the alley, as does the sound of his heart in his ears. He should probably throw the comms away, drop it in a bin and run the other direction. But he needs the map. He needs something to guide him, because he doesn’t trust himself — his shaky hands, his weary shoulders, his stinging feet. The fog in his head making it impossible to think. Nothing he has ever done will have meant anything if he succumbs, and he doesn’t want to go down like that.

When he goes down, he wants it to be on his terms.

The most likely places for the computer tower, he thinks, would be any of the abandoned factories around the perimeter, closed-up processing plants and car manufacturers, which is to say, Juno has no leads and no ideas. He sinks to the ground, hooking an arm around his knees while he studies the map. The light doesn’t hit him, or maybe it’s just dusk. He could give in, just like this. He could lie down and wait to be found; he could run out into the street, announcing his presence.

The thought that hits him then doesn’t leave room for breath. _If you’re going to sightsee, you might as well go the whole way._

And, hell, if it’s something to live five minutes for, he’ll take it. He needs answers.

He waits until the after-school crush dissipates, and another hour for good measure. Boredom presses almost as heavily on him as loss. He memorizes the map. He looks into recent closures; they leave a bold trail. He charts every course of action. But in his head, he never gets out of Newtown; he never gets back to Nureyev. He never gets off Mars. Which must mean that he dies here.

Or, at least, that he surrenders. Either way, he isn’t him, anymore. He’d better start coming to terms with it.

When the streets are clear, he turns into a strictly residential zone. Lights on in the windows spill into every street. He expects to find kids playing, kids turned into monsters by the chip on their chests, skidding up and down the block on skateboards or scooters, their eyes wild and bright and their hands reaching. But there’s only one monster, here, and it looks nothing like the giggling kids engaged in the pleasures of their small yards. It walks the streets of Newtown like it still owns the place, its eye shining, its eye darker than every threat ever leveled at its heart. It speaks in _her_ voice; it touches nothing, keeps _her_ hands close to its chest. It’s spent decades trying to get _her_ out of its bloodstream, pricked itself in a thousand thin lines and bled. For five years, everything he touched had blood on it, and even that wasn’t all his.

At the kids who come close, he snarls. That’s what monsters do, isn’t it? Scream themselves raw. Break their own hearts first. Empty the cartridge into their own flesh.

He turns down a familiar road, the most familiar road in the whole damn city. And he sees it. Not the piled apartments, old, worn-out, cracked windows and clotheslines and somebody’s mother rolling a cigarette beside a front door, but a park. Green, with tall trees and benches arranged in a neat circle, bolted down. The buildings that encircle it have turned their backs on the park. This is nobody’s front lawn, but a getaway in the midst of a busy world. An illusion of privacy.

Where Juno’s childhood building stood, now only trees grow. Overhead the sky, russet and growing dim.

And there, in the center, a statue of Andromeda, Chain-Mail Warrior. She shins like a prism. The absurdity pulls a laugh out of Juno. Of all the buildings Mayor O’Flaherty could have torn down, of all the spectacles to replace it with, he went with this. Sarah Steel would be rolling over in her grave. And that makes Juno laugh louder; he throws back his head and laughs until he cries, and then he wipes his eye and laughs some more.

When his breathing evens out, he takes in the park. The longer he stares, refusing to enter, the more vividly he can see his old front door. He can imagine standing on a street now overgrown with grass, waiting for his brother to swing out that door, his dance bag in hand or nothing at all but his giddy voice. He can see his mother in the window, looking down at him, the way the thing that isn’t Nureyev is looking down at him from his.

Nothing is familiar here, and everything is gone, and that should mean Juno is free. But a grave couldn’t do it, a funeral no one came to, and that means nothing ever will. Closure’s a word people like to use, but in Juno’s experience, it doesn’t exist.

The place is so empty that Juno has to fill it with something. The statue is so still. It looks right over Juno’s head.

His mother’s voice echoes through the park. The wind of it stirs the trees. Juno doesn’t have a second to wonder when the trees grew so tall, because his hands are over his ears. His chest is shaking so hard he thinks he might break his ribs. But his eye is dry.

And he’s still laughing. It comes out in hitches, in hiccups. It threatens to break his ribs.

He is looking for something recognizable, here, something to hold onto. He’s a hair’s breadth from falling apart.

And is mother in the leaves, saying, _I promise you, you’ll never be anything._

His mother saying, _You killed him. This is on you. Every last drop of blood you ever see will be your fault, because it will always be his._

His mother still here, on this block, blood dribbling beneath the front door. Blood spreading across the street, staining the windows, and a boy who never got to say his last words. It’s about time that the place was torn down. Juno is glad, somewhere vicious and dark in him, that it hasn’t been replaced with a new building, made shiny, all the tragedies that happened between its walls covered up with new cement.

Oh, Juno loses everything. People die; people disappear in front of him and he can’t hold onto one, not even now, when he’s given his whole life for the holding on. For a second, he let himself believe he had someone who would stay. He surrendered to hope; he let it swallow him. He held the brightest thing in his life in his palms, and he gave him away.

And in the end, here he is. He will always come back here, to Hyperion City, to the places where the past happened. Blood on the carpet, blood on the wall, the exit hole blasted and messy. The way the air cracked with it.

Benten Steel saying, _I’m not coming with you._ Juno adjusting his badge.

Neither of them ever did know how to make a clean break.

Juno is alone and his mother is all around him, holding him down by the shoulders. Holding him at the base of the statue.

“You think I’m a monster, huh?” he tells his mother. His voice comes out in a ragged scream. He gasps for breath. All around him, lights in the windows, but if anyone’s looking at him, he doesn’t see. “You think I did this?”

The leaves laugh back at him.

“I’ve had enough of being your goddamn monster. I’m through. I’m tired. Take what you want from me, but I’m not gonna give you anything.” And in that shining statue, each link of her chain-mail a miniature sun, stares down at him with his mother’s cold eyes.

He says, “You’d better come and take it from me. I dare you.” He presses his fist hard against his eye, but that doesn’t stop the tears. It doesn’t still his hiccuping breath.

He bends over and cries, and he hates himself for it.

* * *

When Juno can force his frigid limbs to move, he gets the hell out of Newtown. He’s careless in his exit, running rather than waiting for an opportunity. Dodging spindly hands, he hurtles into the next neighborhood and ducks behind a dumpster, gasping.

He knows when Newtown goes. It’s not that the architecture is different—it’s largely the same—but some of the dread goes out of him. Still, his heart keeps pounding in his ears. Overhead, the streetlights turn on all at once. They cast a holiday glow, stretching to the base of the dome.

Juno makes his way to Town Hall.

This time, he doesn’t wait on a roof or lurk around the corner. He marches down the street, daring anyone to step toward him. His eye is red from rubbing it dry, and the bandage around his head is peeling away. It flaps against his skull. In a furious motion, he tears it off. A wet sound follows, but he’s tired and angry and he doesn’t care. Cold air hits his exposed wound, and he bares his teeth at the pain.

He tosses the wrappings to the ground behind him.

The building is larger than it was before, but it lacks the ornate decorations of its predecessor. Cars parked in the side lot spill out across the curb. Dark cars, new cars. Juno doesn’t see anyone on the steps, but there are lights on in many of the windows.

It’s after hours, the sky a hazy blue through the dome, and as Juno approaches, he sees a line of cars peel out of the lot.

He does the most reckless thing he could do. He marches up the front steps and pushes open the door.

The foyer inside rises several stories, with a heavy chandelier and a patterned carpet. The place looks nothing like the inside of Rita’s apartment, like his old office through the window. Where Rita’s place was clinical, more so even than the old days when furniture was kept to regulations, the town hall looks like a relic. Chandelier light falls in patches across every surface.

So here it is: the city a playpen for the rich and powerful, its people wiped off the map by a robotics system so complex it even got Rita. Then again, Juno supposes it was always that way. Human nature is what it is.

He expects the foyer to be crowded with people in ties and pencil skirts, but it’s mostly a hollow space. Someone sits at the reception desk, playing solitaire on the lid of his laptop.

Here goes nothing, thinks Juno, and marches up to the desk. He keeps his hand on his blaster, just in case. “Where’s O’Flaherty’s office?” He uses his best cop voice, and the person at the desk is just a kid, barely twenty-five.

The kid stares at Juno’s face, his healing eye, and says, uncertainly, “You don’t have an appointment.”

“Don’t think I need one. Just tell me where to go.”

Juno doesn’t feel his feet hitting the floor of that long, long hallway. He doesn’t hear his breath when he reads the plaque and stops. He raises his hand to knock, and instead he opens the door.

The last shred of Juno’s restraint keeps him from storming in. He steps inside in case the door should close in front of him, and he takes a second to appraise his surroundings.

It’s the nicest office he’s ever seen. It’s certainly nicer than Juno and Rita’s, a converted one-bedroom apartment, and Juno and Rita’s was nice. The mayor, in a pressed suit with a gold lapel pin, sits behind a desk so expensive Juno would be worried about leaving residue just touching it. Spread across the desk are dozens of loose papers, some with words and some with amateur architectural designs. The mayor looks up from his papers with steady eyes.

The distance between them warps like water.

“Juno Steel,” says Mayor Ramses O’Flaherty.

That voice sends a shiver through Juno, and he clenches his fists. He thinks he recognizes that voice, but it slips away in a second.

Juno doesn’t have time to think. He says, “That’s right.”

“Please, close the door. Take a seat.” It’s careful and measured, which means he’s hiding something. “I’m not going to throw you out, so long as you don’t try anything.”

“I’ll do my best.” Juno can feel the wildness rushing through him as he crosses the room and drops into the hard-backed chair facing the desk. Shoulders tense, he keeps his eye on the mayor. It’s dark and the yellow desk lamp washes out O’Flaherty’s face. He looks terribly old. His grey, close-cropped hair is shot with white, and he keeps running a hand through it, messing it up.

For a second: stalemate. Breath in the air, papers rustling, the shift of fabric. Then, in a bitter voice, Juno says, “New Hyperion, huh?”

The mayor chuckles, his laugh richer than his voice. “City of New Light. Has a ring to it, I think.”

“What did you do?”

While Juno watches, the mayor shuffles his papers into a neat stack. He sets them in a corner of the desk, dropping a heavy paperweight on them. “I think you know that, Juno. You’re smart. You’ve been here for, what was it, two days, and you’ve certainly been poking your head everywhere it could fit.”

O’Flaherty is trying to rile Juno up, and Juno’s blood is hot enough as it is. He says, “Quit the movie villain speech and just tell me, okay.”

It spreads between them— _movie villain_ —like something Juno should know but doesn’t. Something that twinges just enough to alert him of its presence.

“I’m not trying to play the villain,” says O’Flaherty. His voice is low and thin. “But it wouldn’t be fair to deal the game and then show you my whole hand.”

“What, do you think you know me?”

“You’ve made quite a name for yourself since landing, Juno Steel.” It’s a non-answer, and they both know it. Juno not taking his gaze, for a second, from O’Flaherty’s eyes.

Juno squares his shoulders against those condescending eyes. “I get it, you know how to use my name.”

“Can we cut the dramatics and talk like adults? I’m sure you didn’t come all this way for sarcasm and theatrics.”

Juno’s hands twitch in his lap, a wrecking hunger curling them into fists. “How do you know where I’ve been?”

The mayor rises. The chair rolls away from him as he goes to the window. Although an enormous presence seated in that heavy chair, he’s just a thin old man. Beyond his office window stretches a dimly lit park, and buildings with their glowing eyes trained on him. O’Flaherty puts his hand on the window. In a tired voice, he says, “You’re just about the only person in this city outside the THEIA System, and certainly the most meddlesome.”

“You know,” says Juno with a laugh. “I wouldn’t have to meddle if I knew what was going on.”

The mayor rests his forehead on the glass and doesn’t say a thing.

And Juno says it. “I take it I didn’t get in here without any trouble because you wanted to see me. Why?”

“Clever, too. You know, my assistants all have Souls themselves. My advisers, everyone. I’m not that sort of mayor.” It’s almost apologetic.

Juno won’t rise to it. He says, “But you don’t.”

Again, O’Flaherty chuckles. He leaves the dark expanse of the window and walks around the desk, trailing a finger across its wooden surface, stirring the papers. Juno has taken his hand off his blaster; he keeps looking straight ahead. All those people in all those apartment complexes, looking out at the city that changed them.

O’Flaherty says, “I can’t risk becoming complacent. Someone has to oversee, to make sure the THEIA doesn’t forget the human element. But you’ve done enough digging that I’m sure you understand. The THEIA was never built to control people. Far from it. I had it developed for the sole purpose of improving people’s lives. Of helping people reach their full potential. This city was never any good at that. People had to fight for the meager scraps they had. And I’m sure you’ve seen them improved.”

“They’re not themselves.”

Ramses’s hand falls on Juno’s shoulder. Juno shudders. He looks through the window, but he’s looking at nothing. The desk lamp casts their shadows on the glass, Ramses with his back turned, touching Juno’s shoulder. The air warps. Juno can hear Ramses breathing.

“You’ve seen what happened in this city. You grew up in it. The people… they were never going to change on their own. You know that.”

It’s as if Ramses can see right through Juno, as if he can see Sarah Steel’s hand on Juno’s other shoulder, her voice saying, _I’ll change. I’ll do better. It’ll be better in the morning. I promise._

And Juno knows he has to get out.

In a sweet, sickly voice, Ramses says, “What’s the matter, Juno? You’re shaking.”

It’s the sort of thing a lover says, not a man who would white you out to keep his new status quo. Something a mother would say, tucking you into bed. Cleaning up your scraped knees. Holding ice to a sprained wrist until your body is nothing but pulse.

The way a mother should.

Juno rolls his shoulders violently. It’s hard to think; it’s hard to breathe. “Don’t touch me.”

Ramses raises his hands in mock surrender, then lowers them to his sides. He stands exactly behind Juno; in the window’s reflection, Juno can see when their eyes meet. Ramses O’Flaherty a foot behind Juno, towering over Juno in that pressed suit. Juno shivers. But he can’t move while Ramses’s reflection stands between him and the door. He he doesn’t want to fight his way out of this, but, god, he wants a fight.

He says, “Look, Mr. Mayor. If you’re not going to tell me anything, I think I’m just gonna see myself out.”

As if on cue, the door slides open, and a woman in a suit with a visible holster enters. Juno watches through the window while she approaches, removing her gun and inspecting it. She knows he can see her.

Juno realizes that if he wants any advantage, any chance of getting out of here alive, he needs to be on his feet. He rises and spins at once. The chair is the only thing between Ramses and his lackey. They have the same eyes, but Ramses’s are more tired.

“I’m sorry, Juno,” says Ramses. “But I’m afraid you have only two choices.”

“Yeah?” It’s as defiant as Juno can make it. He rises backs up against the desk. No longer does the world look like it does under bathwater. The woman’s face is sharp; it reminds him of Nureyev. Juno says, “No, yeah, I know. You sure know how to make a threat. Take one of your Souls or get the hell out of the city. I’m gonna go with… hm. Getting the hell out. Now if you’ll excuse me, lady, gentleman.”

If Ramses made a signal, Juno doesn’t see it. He just sees the woman glance down and then lunge at Juno. He does fire, then. It’s a warning shot, straight into the corner beside the door, his blaster set to stun. It’s a wild shot, even at close range, and it barely misses the woman’s shoulder. It cracks the plaster, pieces of which rain down on the three of them.

The next time he fires, he doesn’t miss.

He’s too close to. His stun blast travels three inches and slams against the woman’s stomach. She falls backwards. The gun tumbles out of her hand. Juno has to move now. He lays it out in a second, and then he acts. He dodges Ramses’s arm, ducking around the chair. This puts him close to the discarded gun; he doesn’t have time to stoop for it, but he kicks it into the corner. It skids to a halt against a bookcase.

He shoves the door open and is out, bolting wild down the hall. Glancing over his shoulder. The kid at the desk calls, “Hey, wait, you can’t just—”

But Juno doesn’t stop. He’s five blocks away before he remembers to breathe. Resting against a dumpster, he braces his hands on his knees and gasps for breath. He listens for sirens, for the rumble of cars going by on the smooth, clean streets. His whole body shakes.

When he can breathe again, he sits on the shadow of the dumpster. He rests his cheek on his knee while the adrenaline wears off, replaced by weariness. He puts his head between his knees and hauls air into his body and he is so alone. He has just a second to pause, a second to decide what to do. He is running out of decisions to make. His feet ache from running.

And the city is so small. There’s only one place left to go.

* * *

“I’m tired,” Juno tells Peter Nureyev through the intercom. His body burns with exhaustion, although the night’s excitement has kept his eye alert.

“I know, baby,” says Nureyev. It doesn’t sound like something Nureyev would say. It’s always _darling_ to him, _dear, love._ His pixelated face stares at Juno through the intercom, his voice scratchy. Juno can’t make out anything beyond that, but Nureyev is smiling. The night grows colder as Juno’s sweat dries on his back and neck, and he’s shivering.

“Would you let me in if I said—” Juno’s voice slurs. He rests his head on the wall. “I’m tired, Nureyev. Can I come in?”

“I don’t hold it against you. You had to leave, but now you’re back.”

What does it matter if that’s the THEIA talking? He’s still Nureyev, isn’t he? More than anything, Juno needs him to be Nureyev.

A silence stretches out. It’s easier for Juno to keep his eye closed, heavy with dried tears.

“I can’t see you,” says Nureyev. “Are you okay?”

“I want to be better. I want… I want one of those things. A Soul. I’m tired of running from it. I want to go home. I want you.”

Nureyev laughs, that soft, close-lipped laugh. Closing his eyes, Juno imagines another, warmer night, sitting at his kitchen table across from Nureyev and Nureyev laughing like that.

A sharp buzz from the intercom, and the door clicks. Nureyev says, “I could never deny you. Come in.”

Juno climbs those familiar steps alone. Automatic lights come on as he moves from front hall to stairwell to corridor. His footsteps chase him, heavier than he’s ever heard them. He knows the shape of death, has stared into it for thirty long years, has come up with every way to make it beautiful. A quiet dark, a noiseless warmth. But he’s as far from understanding this as ever before.

The door has no window; Juno knows it by muscle memory alone.

This is it, he thinks to himself. He did what he needed to do, and the game’s up. The corridor is long and lonely and he has nowhere else to go.

He raises his hand to knock. And then Nureyev pulls open the door.

He’s dressed in a thin robe over a thinner slip, his feet bare and his hair pulling itself loose around his brow. Concern is etched deep across his face, his sharp, warm eyes so close to Juno’s, his cheeks plain and devoid of foundation. They look at each other; the moment stretches forever.

“Baby,” whispers Peter Nureyev.

And Juno falls into his arms.

Nureyev holds Juno tightly, there in the doorway. He strokes Juno’s back, his neck, his hair. Juno can feel Nureyev breathing against him, the heavy pressure of it. And for a second, Juno does cry. Just for a second, just for a minute, until he’s able to gasp and stand on his own.

“I missed you,” says Juno.

“I know.” Holding Juno around the waist, Nureyev leads him inside. The door slides closed. The kitchen light is on; the bedroom is dark. Nureyev leads Juno to the couch, where the dim light casts soft shadows.

Nureyev says, “Let’s get you out of that jacket.” He helps Juno disrobe, until Juno is in just his undershirt. The coffee table is bare except for a small, glittering Soul.

“Honey,” murmurs Nureyev. Juno’s eyes move back up to his face. “You’re a mess. Are you up for a shower?”

“In the morning,” says Juno. “After I’ve slept, and all this is okay.”

Nureyev says, “I’m going to sponge you down.” He rises and the warmth of him leaves Juno at once, shivering under the cold sweat. Juno sinks onto the couch while Nureyev disappears into the bathroom. Juno can hear the sound of running water, Nureyev’s voice humming softly. It’s sweet. It’s so sweet.

And Juno almost gave it all away.

There is another voice humming in the back of his mind, and it is saying, _Monster, monster._ He squeezes his eye shut and presses against it for good measure.

Nureyev reappears with a damp washcloth and a roll of gauze. He pulls off Juno’s undershirt and rubs the warm, wet cloth up and down his body. He takes particular care around Juno’s chest. Juno can feel how heavily his chest rises under Nureyev’s hands. When Juno is clean, Nureyev takes the blanket off the back of the couch and wraps it around Juno’s shoulders.

“You’re looking much better,” Nureyev says. “Your eye.”

“Wouldn’t know it, the way it’s been stinging,” Juno tells him. Even pulling the blanket closer, he shivers. It’s almost a form of foreplay, these gentle ministrations. The way Nureyev washes the eye with the same damp cloth and dries it with the edge of his robe; the way he lays out a pad of gauze and wraps the roll around it, again and again; the way his fingers stroke Juno’s hair as he does so. The pressure of the wrapping brings back a feeling of control.

“Are you ready?” asks Nureyev. He takes a safety pin out of his mouth, and Juno can feel where Nureyev pulls the gauze away from his head to clip it. His body presses against Juno’s on the couch.

Juno’s breath shakes. “I am.”

Nureyev rises, asking Juno to remain seated or lie down, whichever is most comfortable. Taking a deep breath, Juno stretches his legs out on the couch, bunching up a small cushion on which to rest his head. Nureyev looks so big from here.

And then, like a child taken in for a vaccine, Juno says, “How—how does it go?”

“You’re better off not knowing.”

“Please,” says Juno, so Nureyev tells him.

It’s unpleasant, but the procedure itself is minimally invasive. That comes later, when the Soul connects fully to his nervous system. Juno listens while Nureyev retrieves the Soul from the coffee table. He spins it in his thin, clever fingers, fingers Juno has seen as adept on stolen goods as on Juno’s body. He looks at it with a tender expression, and then he asks again, “You’re sure you’re ready?”

“More than anything.”

Juno keeps his eyes on Nureyev while Nureyev runs a finger down Juno’s sternum. Nureyev doesn’t look up from his fingers. Juno keeps watching until the first sting, and then he looks up at the ceiling, biting his lip hard. The Soul is cold, and it is cold inside him. For a second, Nureyev lets it go to stroke Juno’s cheek, and then his hand is back on Juno’s chest. The gentle pressure of that helps Juno relax.

“Hold my hand,” says Nureyev. Juno’s hand shoots out wildly, but Nureyev catches it. Against his skin, Nureyev’s hand is hot, and Juno holds on. “I’ve got you, and I’m not going to let you go.”


	4. Chapter 4

WELCOME, USER… JUNOSTEEL… TO YOUR THEIA_SOUL

It’s dark behind his eyes, and he can’t open them. The voice is less a voice than a thought, warm and breathy. It puts him at ease.

DO YOU WISH TO ENGAGE… ORIENTATION?

 _No,_ thinks Juno. _No, I’m good._ He can feel it in his body, a heavy tingling in his nerves, in his veins, filing him up. If he focuses, he is aware of the shape of his body, but it he feels grey and numb. He is startled to find that he is not afraid.

He opens his eyes. It’s dark out, but a dim, yellowish glow comes from somewhere behind him. A bedroom light, he thinks. A lantern in the window, calling him home. A figure, half in shadow, waits at eye level, and Juno knows he is not alone.

It could be home. He could be home, here.

UNDERSTOOD, USER.LITTLEMONSTER

 _What?_ thinks Juno. The voice flickered, just for a second, to something programmed with malice, but USER.UNKNOWN has his dark eyes on Juno, hand in his hand. Juno tries to twitch, and on the third try, he does. Slowly, he comes back into himself. The shape of his body becomes less a hypothetical and more real, his limbs heavy and aimless.

He tries to think why fear slides through him like water, but it dissipates inside him.

 _Shh,_ says USER.PETERGLASS. _It’s okay. This is normal. It’ll all be okay._

And then even the confusion goes as the THEIA_SOUL pulls him under.

The only thing he hears for a long time is its voice, and he is relieved. His body relaxes around him. For the first time in… he doesn’t know how long, his skin is just skin. Not a cage, not a sand-covered cave he sits sweltering at the back of, waiting for a way out.

YOUR THEIA_SOUL WILL BE ONLINE IN 2 HOURS

The bed beneath him is warm and soft. He is safe. For the first time in his life, he is safe.

_Just… do what you have to do._

SYNCING TO USER.JUNOSTEEL

COORDINATING CONTROL OF…

…MUSCULAR ACTIVITY

…OPTICAL NERVES

…CRANIAL STORAGE

CONTROL ASSUMED. USER.JUNOSTEEL IS SYNCED TO THE THEIA_NETWORK

Still, he is in the quiet dark of his own body. His Soul sings its song to him, sings everyone’s song.

He wants to be a part of that song forever. And still the long crawl to setup. It rings and rings in his head, and he welcomes the way it rises over the clatter of his thoughts.

REVIEWING MEMORY FOR SOURCES OF PAIN…

Juno would be lying if he said his first thought wasn’t one of relief, a comfortable whiteness settling down around him. USER.PETERNUREYEV has his fingers on Juno’s pulse. He strokes up and down Juno’s arm, grounding him, reminding him that there is a world waiting for him beyond his eyelids. The THEIA pulls up memories more rapidly than Juno can think: a city he is already forgetting, bright and filthy; a statue adorned in chain-mail and him folded in half before it; a boy with dark hair pinned around his ears, standing in a room covered in mats and wall-length mirrors, pulling his leg up to a barre and then above; the way the bathwater looked when Juno held himself under, just to see what it felt like.

His Soul doesn’t let him linger. Each moment he sees vivid as any sunrise slides away from him in a second.

…ACQUIRED

MEMORY BLOCK SUCCESSFUL

Juno falls back into it. He knows, clinically, that he has never felt like this, but he doesn’t remember, viscerally, ever feeling anything. Not misery, anyway; not melancholy, loneliness, guilt. He’s never put the feelings into words before.

And the Soul is still singing.

…KEYWORDS COMPILED

…EMPATHY RECEPTORS ENGAGED

UPLOADING DATA TO THE THEIA_OPERATINGSYSTEM…

…UPLOAD 35%

He doesn’t think. He doesn’t have to. He doesn’t have to hurt.

…UPLOAD 60%

…UPLOAD 86%

…UPLOAD COMPLETE

THANK YOU, USER.JUNOSTEEL… YOU ARE FREE TO DO… GOOD…

* * *

Or maybe this: _You are free to be good._


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To tell you the truth, I'm terrified to post this chapter, so I want you to be aware of what's coming. Note the addition of the tag _"Suicide,"_ and **PLEASE heed these.**
> 
> TWs for suicidal thoughts, mentions of self-harm, grief and mentions of death, and a **discussed suicide attempt.** This last point, which is at the very end, is fairly graphic, so be warned, be prepared, and be safe. Now revised to be much less graphic.
> 
> If you need to skip it, I can't do the fancy link yet but skip before "He wants to tell PETER that he is seeing it" and come back on the penultimate paragraph that starts, "And, goddamn it".

When USER.JUNOSTEEL opens his eyes, his back stiff, USER.PETERNUREYEV is crouched between the coffee table and the couch, still holding his hand. His hair, which now falls all across his brow, catches a light from somewhere behind the couch. His bright, sharp eyes don’t waver a second. USER.JUNOSTEEL can feel breath on his face.

He looks at USER.PETERNUREYEV and can see his Soul.

DO YOU WISH TO COLLECT MORE INFORMATION? says the voice of the THEIA.

_Nah. Save it for the morning._

It is so easy to hold the THEIA inside his head, so easy to let it be the other half of his thoughts. He was so lonely before, his mind a black hole, devouring every promise of hope, every fleeting joy he allowed himself. It’s not just clarity of mind, but already the THEIA has caught the traces of a dark spiral in JUNOSTEEL’s thoughts and washed them away. He doesn’t know how he lived, when his crushing melancholy was the only thing in his head.

And his chest throbs. His heart. The heavy rush of adrenalin that kicked in when the Soul attached to his nerves—he knows that, now, the process, the way it dulled the pain first—has faded, and his eye droops. It’s hard to think himself, but the THEIA is clear.

“How did it go?” says PETERNUREYEV finally in a soft voice.

“Okay, I guess. It just… was.” JUNOSTEEL closes his eyes and breathes deeply. He pushes himself up. He is expecting to feel dizzy—to feel tired, at least—but mostly he just feels calm. Whole. His hand is stiff from being held, so he pulls it back and rolls his fingers. He cracks all his knuckles, as a groan escapes him. His body is stiff, worn raw.

PETERNUREYEV rises to claim the vacated couch cushion. His body is warm and solid, and JUNOSTEEL can feel his skin through those thin layers of clothing. It’s not enough to arouse, but JUNOSTEEL falls gratefully against his shoulder. A soft laugh—whose?—and the night comes in close around them. All is quiet except the pounding of PETERNUREYEV’s heart, the soft rustle of fabric, their feet on the carpet.

And suddenly, JUNOSTEEL wants to see the next morning more than anything. He burns for it. He wants to see the life he will lead not in the intimacy of nighttime but in the light of day. Him and PETERNUREYEV and their shining, beautiful city.

But first, sleep, to wipe away the past few days, the hungry desperation. Then a shower, and breakfast, and the rising sun turning their hands to prisms.

JUNOSTEEL pushes himself up off the couch, but his legs shake. He stumbles, reaching for the coffee table before PETERNUREYEV catches him. For a second, warm silence, and then they are both laughing. It makes JUNOSTEEL’s face hurt after days of tears and grime, but PETERNUREYEV reaches up and touches his cheek. For a moment, JUNOSTEEL doesn’t know what to do, then, still laughing, he presses his cheek against that soft, sharp-nailed hand.

“You’re beautiful,” someone says, but he doesn’t know who. More laughter, while the dark holds itself at the window. JUNOSTEEL slides a hand down to PETERNUREYEV’s waist; PETERNUREYEV rolls his body until they’re pressed together.

He deserves this. He knows he deserves this.

He will have time tomorrow to see what PETERNUREYEV did to the place, how he made it beautiful, what the THEIA did, but now he holds tight and kisses the man he loves while they laugh into each other’s mouth.

But his kisses are slow and sloppy, and PETERNUREYEV pulls back and looks at him with serious eyes. “I imagine you haven’t slept in days. Come on. The bed is big enough for both of us.”

And JUNOSTEEL knows, without having to directly consult his Soul, that this is his apartment, too, and it always will be. So he lets PETERNUREYEV lead him to bed. Neither of them turn the lights on, but the city outside is bright enough that they can see each other clearly. JUNOSTEEL rests against the bed frame to remove his shoes, and then, without stripping out of his trousers, he climbs into bed. Sighing at its warmth, he watches PETERNUREYEV remove his robe and hang it in the closet. His thin slip accentuates his body, and JUNOSTEEL is not ashamed of staring.

“Another time,” PETERNUREYEV promises. “Tomorrow. Get some rest. You’re home, now.” He slides in, and their bodies dip toward each other. He rests an arm around JUNOSTEEL’s waist. It is hot under the covers, and their breaths fill the small space between them.

“Thank you.” His voice is heavy and hoarse.

“No need to thank me. You’re happy, and you’re safe, and that’s what matters.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I am.”

And when JUNOSTEEL falls asleep, PETERNUREYEV is still looking at him, unblinking. Before those eyes, he will always be safe. Whatever golden world awaits them in the morning, PETERNUREYEV will hold his hand and show him.

* * *

When JUNOSTEEL opens his eyes, the first thing he sees is the back of PETERNUREYEV’s head, dark hair tumbling about the pillows. One of JUNO’s fingers is curled against his chest, the other around PETER’s waist. He watches the rise and fall of his lover’s shoulder. Slowly, with fingers that don’t tremble, he touches the curls of hair at the base of PETER’s neck. It’s so soft, his neck so warm, the serrated line of his spine. JUNOSTEEL touches tenderly. It is the most natural thing in the world. He doesn’t have to be afraid.

PETER sighs just as JUNO presses his lips to that hairline. “Good morning, Juno.” His precise annunciation, the lilt of his accent, fill JUNO up. He twists around to face JUNO. His eyes are bleary with sleep, so JUNO shifts his hand and and rubs them away. PETER hums.

“How do you feel about breakfast?” murmurs PETER.

“I’d feel better if that breakfast was you.” It comes out without him thinking and is followed by no shame. He knows, as if looking into a box from someone else’s attic, that he couldn’t always reconcile a warm body on his, pleasure he couldn’t deny and someone who wanted to give that to him, with his conviction that he deserved nothing. He lived in that shame for long, dark years, while he grew older.

But PETER puts his hot mouth on JUNO’s. They kiss until JUNO flips PETER on top of him. Through the curtain of his hair, PETER stares down, and his eyes alone could be home. He kisses JUNO gently—on the lips, on the nose, on the lids of both eyes—humming as he does so.

Then PETER says, “I’m serious about breakfast. I bet you haven’t eaten for two days, either, and I’m not about to put you through exercise of any sort before that.”

JUNO sighs and lets PETER extract himself from the tangle of arms and blankets. In the doorway, he looks heavenly, tugging his slip down around his thighs from where it had ridden up straddling JUNO. JUNO can’t deny how hungrily he watches that.

And then he’s gone, light from the main room pouring in. JUNO closes his eyes and gives himself a moment to breathe.

While PETER scrambles eggs, JUNO goes into the bathroom and turns on the light. Where once this bathroom had only a cord to illuminate a bare bulb, now a row of lights sits embedded in the ceiling above the sink. His reflection looks different—not taller, its hair not any greyer, but more assured. Calmer, without the dark weight he’s carried around for decades.

He unwraps his eye and stares at that, too. The swelling has gone down, and he feels a twinge of melancholy.

And then he doesn’t. This is him. He looks like himself, not a creature in his skin, not something with bruised and itching fists. He looks calm, centered, all his scrambled thoughts pulled together and evened out. Beyond the cracked door, he smells the eggs. His new forever life, calling him into its light.

He wonders if PETER should have a job to go to, and then the thought slips away. The wall clock ticks away.

At the table, while sprinkling pepper onto his eggs, PETER says, “So. What do you think?”

It’s not so much that JUNO’s mind goes blank but that he wants to say it the right way. He will have a million chances to sing the THEIA praises, but there is a lot of darkness he knows is still trying to chase him out of his past but that he will never have to look at again.

“It’s,” he says, and then all the words slip out of his head. He feels alive, really alive. Until now, maybe he’d just been existing, collecting dust while he threw himself into danger for the taste of the feeling that surrounds him without prompting now.

JUNO laughs. “I don’t have to tell you. You already know.”

“I could, yes. But I want to hear it from you.”

So JUNO says, with awe in his voice, “I don’t know why I ran from it for so long. I saw you, and… that should have been enough. I didn’t have the easiest life, but it doesn’t need to be that way.”

And the sun reflects off his new, beautiful city, and PETER doesn’t take his eyes off JUNO once.

* * *

PETER calls him _baby. Baby_ when he calls JUNO to the table, _baby_ when he kisses the top of JUNO’s head, _baby_ when he stares over the book he’s reading on the couch. Once, JUNO wouldn’t have been able to imagine himself as anyone’s baby, but those days are long gone. All those old fears smoothed out like a bedsheet.

And his THEIA speaks to him. Throughout the day, it keeps him company. It guides his thoughts, corrals them, changes them when he knows his head slips to darker subjects. Every time, it calls him USER.JUNOSTEEL. He never forgets what he is to the THEIA, but in a way it’s reassuring: he is connected to the whole network, to the whole city. He is not alone. he will never have to be alone again.

There is no alcohol on any of the shelves, but it takes him days to notice that. There are no stains of any kind on the furniture.

PETER has been taking good care of the place.

And when JUNO sees the knife block, he only thinks of cooking.

It is so easy to live like this, like this is the way he was always supposed to live. He builds a life there, with PETER, in their own apartment, two souls with two Souls, and they are happy. They are nothing but happy. JUNO smiles more in a day than he did for ten years.

They cook most meals together. They make a mess of the kitchen and spend half an hour cleaning it up, because they spend most of the time making out. They put their hands everywhere. There, in front of this window or any other; they don’t care. JUNO jumps up on the counter without breaking the kiss, dish suds on both their hands.

And it’s not all the THEIA. Mostly it’s them — their own ambitions, their joy, their desires for a better and better life. Their own laughter, the light in their own eyes. Some days, JUNO forgets about the THEIA entirely, its voice quiet in his head and its suggestions taking place subconsciously. He doesn’t need to think about it for it to do its job.

Each day is sweeter than the last, the sun warmer, the marvel of PETER’s humming in the kitchen or flipping through pages of a book more captivating.

They make a meal plan and go grocery shopping together, where they laugh like they’re twenty-five. They laugh up and down the aisles, PETER clinging to JUNO’s arm, appraising vegetables, making lewd remarks in a voice light with giggles.

All the other shoppers are laughing too.

JUNO experiments with the extent of the THEIA_OS in linking him to others, the way PETER did once, in a memory whose door he can’t open. He doesn’t even have to see them. He pulls out names, faces, ages and occupations and dreams—so many dreams—and it makes him feel like he’s a part of something. A part of the whole city in a way he never was when he fought for every scrap he had.

They take leisurely walks. They meet the neighbors. They have a lot of time to stand around in the lobby, at the bus stop, in the warm, climate-controlled air with arms full of grocery bags and chat. First it’s just PETER, his smile quick and dazzling, speaking in that accent that would draw anyone in, and JUNO is content to listen, to be part of the conversation by proximity. But his Soul nudges him. It opens his mouth.

USER.CAROLINECHROME and USER.JORDIEASTER, upstairs, thinking of moving in together. USER.WISTERIABROWN, eighty-two, with houseplants spilling out onto the corridor. USER.ROXYYOUNG, part of the new generation, two and a half with young parents and still in a stroller.

There is no room for professional thieves or private eyes in New Hyperion City, but friendly conversations with neighbors keep the world getting bigger.

And they get JUNO that eye patch. He doesn’t need it, and no one left in the city would say a word about the chasm in his face, the pale scar tissue growing there despite his doctors’ best efforts, but he tries one on regardless. He likes the way he looks: rugged, alluring, mysterious. PETER says it’s sexy, and JUNO beams for a day.

JUNO doesn’t think about killing himself once. He doesn’t think about hurting himself.

Every morning, after turning off the alarm clock but before rolling out of bed, PETER says, “Are you happy?” He says it without expectation, relaxed and lazy. His eyes keep slipping closed in front of JUNO’s, their hands entwined in the space between their chests. And every morning, JUNO kisses him until PETER melts against him.

“Yes,” JUNO whispers into that hot, hot mouth. “I’m happy. I’m so happy.”

And sometimes, when he is close to falling asleep, a soft, gruff part of him remembers how PETER looked when he first received his Soul, leaning against JUNO’s shoulder in the dark, his eyes fever-clear. The way he didn’t look like himself at all, his voice a monotone, his shirt unbuttoned to the waist. His body so small; his presence larger than life. How JUNO looked for a way out for days, ran himself into the ground and kept moving. Sometimes he can almost feel an echo of that desperate worry, at odds with the life he has built.

And then it’s gone, and in his ear, his Soul is saying, WOULD YOU LIKE TO AUTOMATICALLY REMOVE SOURCES OF FEAR?

It is asking, Would you like to forget?

 _Yeah,_ thinks Juno, his eyes slipping shut. _I’d like that._

* * *

And when they kiss, JUNO puts his mouth on the hot metal of PETER’s Soul until PETER trembles. He puts his mouth on PETER’s throat, and PETER tips his head back, arching the back of his neck.

It is easy to love this way, without the fear of commitment. Without the fear of getting so close to someone that they know everything about him, so close that he can’t control his vulnerabilities. Without the fear of taking more than he gives — so much, sometimes, that he wouldn’t take at all. Jerking himself off in the bathroom after a lover has left, the smell of it so strong and no need to close the bathroom door.

He has given all that to PETER, and even more to the THEIA_SYSTEM.

He takes his shirts off, his jackets; he lets PETER see his arms. Even the neuro-connective device can’t heal old scars.

But it doesn’t matter, because when PETER kisses down from his wrists to his throat, neither of them say a word.

And when PETER falls asleep with JUNO’s arm around him, hair tickling JUNO’s neck, JUNO is so in love.

* * *

JUNO doesn’t recognize a single of the joints PETER takes him to on dates. The longer this goes on, the longer he can’t find the names in his internal databank, the more his Soul clamps down on his panic, calming him even before his fingers could clench in PETER’s. PETER insists on taking him to nice places, expensive places, but they don’t have to worry about money. The only person in all of New Hyperion with any worries must be the mayor, Juno thinks, and pities him.

Hand in hand, he and PETER walk through the city. Despite having an easily-downloadable map just one thought away, JUNO tells his Soul to keep quiet on those walks. He wants to sightsee. He wants to see his city with his own eyes.

He has never been to these restaurants with their chandeliers and fishtanks and wall-length glass because he has never had reason to eat there. He has never had reason to eat delicacies. Sure, he has opened his mouth for someone else’s fork above a clean tablecloth, spilling drops of wine. But PETER’s eyes hold him like no one else’s. PETER’s eyes have a galaxy in them, and JUNO wants to see its every star.

And there is something to walking sober through the city with a lover who he wants to see him, a lover he is proud of with and without himself on their arm, that surpasses the dim lighting of any fancy restaurant.

His body knows these streets, even if his mind doesn’t. So he digs inside himself to place them.

In his head, the voice of the THEIA says, like an archaic, tangled-up tape, RELAX, USER.JUNOSTEEL.

 _What if I don’t want to relax?_ JUNO thinks viciously.

THAT COMMAND IS NOT IN MY DATABASE.

_Then add it right now. Let me think my own thoughts._

ASSUMING CONTROL OF MUSCLES. RELAXING HANDS… STEADYING HEARTBEAT… IT IS OKAY, USER.JUNOSTEEL.

It does that again and again, every time JUNO struggles for the clarity of mind to place these places he thinks he should know.

And then he relaxes, and it all slides away.

“Juno.” It’s PETER’s voice. They’ve stopped at a street corner, and when JUNO’s eyes refocus, he can see the walk sign turn from green to red. A rush of air and they are alone.

“What? I’m paying attention.”

PETER laughs, and JUNO wants more than anything to make him laugh like that for the rest of their lives. PETER says, “It’s just, your eyes went blank there for a second.”

“I’m okay. Don’t worry about it.” If he has to fight this battle with himself, he’ll do it quietly. He doesn’t need to worry anyone.

And the THEIA says, NOW IS A GOOD TIME TO ASK OTHERS FOR ASSISTANCE. And JUNO knows he doesn’t want to bottle it up forever. For a day longer than he has to.

This will be his test, he thinks: which command he listens to. He can’t have doubts, and he certainly can’t open up about them. The longer he thinks, the longer PETER stares at him with those dark, concerned eyes, the more likely it becomes that PETER, and the rest of the city, will know.

The walk light blinks green. The streets are no longer his. The streets are nothing but his. And even though the city is beautiful, he realizes this: he can hardly remember Hyperion City before it became New Hyperion. He has a recollection of filth, of streets clogged with bodies, of myriad odors he can’t name, but he can’t see them when he closes his eyes. Even his own front door is nothing but shining.

And he wants to come home to it.

Home has never been a sanctuary from himself, but at least it provided shelter from the world. There is no self he is trying to hide from, anymore. He has nothing to hide. PETER looks at him and sees everything, and even without a word, JUNO knows this.

But the longer the months become, the more he wants to hide.

* * *

USER.JUNOSTEEL is in the bathroom and the door is closed. His discarded shirt and jacket are piled on the toilet seat, and the water runs warm. A dress shirt and nice slacks hang over the shower door, and in the living room, PETER is probably still draped across the sofa, making good on his promise to become a trophy husband, with his shirt unbuttoned and gold necklaces dangling to his navel.

He keeps saying that, so JUNO keeps imagining the wedding. A floor length gown for him, not chastity white but blue as the skies, and a train so long somebody else has to carry it. Lace everywhere on PETER, gold accentuating everything, boutonniere pale and dazzling and his face flushed while JUNO walks up the aisle.

They’re halfway there already, JUNO thinks. Sharing a bed, sharing finances, cooking each other meals. The only things missing are the promise, the rings, the certificate and, of course, the public celebration.

What more could he ask of paradise?

 _Hey, THEIA,_ he is saying. His heart pounds so hard that he is sure PETER can hear it. He has kept the lights off, but in the natural light of the fogged window, he can see his body clearly. His muscles, the trail of hair beneath his abdomen that he hasn’t shaved in several days, his shoulders as one hand braces him against the sink and the other cradles the thing in the center of his chest.

It looks gold in any light, but in some lights it looks more raised. This is one of them.

Every time he touches it, he worries for a second that his hand will come away burned. He touches it and can feel it inside him, the way it sends its cold wires out into his nervous system. It stretches from one end of his body to the other, and as he thinks, as he moves, he can feel it shifting inside. It rises and falls with his breath; it pulses with his heart.

And he is so alone.

He is afraid, the feeling too small for his Soul to eradicate, that PETER is watching him. That the door isn’t all the way closed; that PETER’s Soul is connecting to his as he stands there, downloading every doubt. He doesn’t know the first half of the potential latent in the THEIA_SYSTEM, but he knows it’s bigger than he can imagine. Usually the fear comes in small feelings, a breeze across sand.

He touches the Soul, and a swell of terror washes through him, to be as quickly replaced with calm. He closes his eyes, and when he opens them, he’s still there. The world isn’t going away any time soon.

“What if I didn’t want you?” He says it so soft he can barely hear it himself, but he has to say it aloud. He says from a distance, but he has to know he isn’t making it up.

YOU DO. It’s that easy.

And it diffuses JUNO. It washes over him, covers up the sandstorm in him. He looks at his body with its golden centerpiece in the mirror, and he is perfect. He thinks about asking PETER to tell him how perfect he is later, when they get back from their night out. The echoes of the THEIA’s voice spin around in his head.

“Yeah,” says JUNO. “I guess I do.”

* * *

Mayor O’Flaherty is on the television when JUNO turns it on. Not USER.OFLAHERTY, just a man in a tight suit behind a podium. His lapel pin looks like a city grid. If JUNO digs deep, he thinks it looks like Newtown.

From the kitchen, PETER says, “Why do you have to have that thing on?” It’s calm as a blank slate.

“Habit,” says JUNO before he thinks about what he’s saying. “I feel like we’ve been in our little bubble and I want to see some what’s going on in the world. And, you know, it gets kind of quiet in here sometimes.”

He would have thought that the THEIA’s omnipresence would have put an end to the need for mayoral speeches and press conferences, but as he turns the volume up, he can hear the clicking of cameras, the jostling of microphones.

Mayor O’Flaherty is saying, “And the THEIA Project has been a success, truly, beyond my wildest dreams. Surely you all agree with me. Surely not one person could say the THEIA System has made their lives worse, and those are exceptional numbers. Better than anyone could have hoped for.”

“It doesn’t get that quiet,” says PETER. “And if you want loud, well…”

JUNO chuckles. “That’s what I did, you know. Before you. Long, busy day and I didn’t want to be alone with myself, but I didn’t want to talk to anyone, either.”

“But you’re not alone.”

“Yeah. I know.”

On the screen, a reporter is asking in a deep alto, “So what do you plan to do next? Crime is down one-hundred percent, and you’ve already closed down the HCPD.”

JUNO cranes his neck around to see into the kitchen. “I’ll turn it off, if you want.”

O’Flaherty says, “Mostly closed down. This city, this beautiful city, takes care of itself perfectly. I dare say it’s what all of us never dared to let ourselves dream. Well, it was only one dream away. But as to my next move, I suppose it’s around time I let you in on it.”

PETER says, “No, I want to hear this. I thought… it was going to be white noise, mindless…” He stands in the doorway, his eyes glowing with blue light, dripping sauce from a spatula in his hand, a checkered apron tied around his waist.

“That’s what it used to be.” JUNO says it soft enough that PETER don’t glance from the screen. He knows he remembers putting the news on as white noise, but he can’t remember a thing he did during that time. He imagines sitting in the new apartment, exactly where he’s sitting now, and no one in the other room.

It’s hard to shake, a life like this.

“We had to start in Newtown,” O’Flaherty is saying. “We had to be sure it worked perfectly. We knew it would work well, of course, but we strove for nothing short of perfection. And that’s what I’m doing here in New Hyperion, too. A man who thinks only of his city, of the people living there, is thinking too small. Mars is not just New Hyperion City. Mars is also Olympus Mons. Mars is—”

“The THEIA Experiment,” says JUNO.

“What?” says PETER.

JUNO cracks his neck and turns around again. The door to the kitchen is open, but JUNO can only see his back. JUNO props his arms on the couch back, still holding the remote. “Do you remember when we were traveling together and we heard people talking about some THEIA Experiment—Project—whatever?”

“I remember you talking to me about it. I didn’t hear it myself.”

Because that honeymoon is the only part of his past that JUNO remembers—and he has probed the shape of it, in quiet hours at night after PETER has fallen asleep or while brushing his teeth, side-by-side with PETER—he cherishes it. As he speaks, the old rush of piecing together a case hits him hard. “It was Newtown first, right? And now it’s New Hyperion, and he’s talking about Olympus Mons. That’s what he’s going to say, Peter. Mars _is_ the THEIA Experiment.”

“There is potential for good,” says Mayor O’Flaherty, his chin raised and his voice projecting from the stage he stands on outside of Town Hall into JUNO’s living room, “in the whole galaxy.”

Turning back to the television, JUNO says, “Hah!”

“You’re good,” says PETER. His hands fall on JUNO’s shoulders, and his chin rests on the top of JUNO’s head. “And you’re cute. Were you always this good?”

“I was.” It comes out so easy, and he’s never believed it more.

PETER’s lips meet JUNO’s hairline, and they don’t pull away for a very long time.

O’Flaherty says, “If we could give the rest of Mars a fraction of what New Hyperion has, I could rest easy.”

A reporter: “As mayor of New Hyperion, you won’t be able to oversee the spread of the THEIA System beyond the limits of the dome.”

The mayor chuckles, there on the stage, Town Hall imposing behind him. “You’re right about that. I won’t. I’m just one man. But the THEIA can handle itself, and remember, it started here.”

There’s a clamoring from just off-screen, but nobody seems to echo what JUNO is thinking. The THEIA_SYSTEM will always have a central databank. He doesn’t know what it means, so when he files it away, it doesn’t stir his Soul.

He doesn’t think while the mayor says, “But it’s not about statistics. It’s not about how much the crime and homelessness have dropped; it’s not something I’m doing just to pad my resume when I run for another term.” He laughs, and the reporters laugh with him. “It’s about each of you. It’s about your freedom to live your best potential. Not one of us has to be weighed down by old habits and traumas, by the things that happened to us and the things we did. Because with our Souls, we will only make the best possible choices. And that’s the most wonderful thing of all.”

A clamor off-screen, and then a baritone rises above it. JUNO doesn’t catch the whole sentence, but he hears this: “What about the war?”

O’Flaherty straightens his tie and takes a deep breath. He looks so imposing that even through the screen, JUNO feels small.

“Peace is dependent on whims. On how well our leaders want to honor their treaties, how valuable the lives lost were to them. No one wants a repeat of the war, but human nature makes every decision conditional. Every promise, every hope.” He looks into the camera, and JUNO can feel goosebumps rise on his arms. “But I promise you this: With the THEIA, the past doesn’t matter,” says Mayor O’Flaherty. “The future is everything. Nothing matters more than this moment, and in this moment, we have the opportunity to make the world a better place. Forever.”

“Imagine that,” murmurs PETER. His breath chills JUNO’s ear.

“In fact,” says O’Flaherty. “We’ve already made preparations. Until then, we must continue looking forward to the day when the galaxy can breathe again.”

PETER reaches past JUNO and takes the remote, turning the television off without moving his chin from JUNO’s head. In the quiet, JUNO doesn’t know how to voice the discomfort that rises like panic in him.

And then he is not thinking about it at all. He is thinking about the stars. He is thinking about being in the stars with PETERNUREYEV, seeing places war-ravaged and rebuilt stronger and just as vibrant as before, cities that were never crushed, the endless perseverance of the human spirit. Life is abundant and life is beautiful, and the lives he has touched amount to less than 1 percent, less than 1 percent of 1 percent, of the sprawling mass of humanity.

And he wants more. But he’s always going to come home to this, to the man whose arms are around JUNO’s neck, who hangs delicately over the sofa back with his cheek against JUNO’s.

There is a word for this, a perfect world, but he is learning that utopia still feels like a dream when you’re living it.

He catches PETER’s mouth but he’s still thinking about that press conference, the clamor still going on beyond the darkened screen, soon to be uplinked to the central databank. The mayor laid out every promise without faltering.

“What are you thinking?” murmurs PETER, but JUNO has his eyes closed.

“You’re probably burning breakfast.”

“You’re worried.”

“I can’t remember the last time I was worried.”

PETER pulls back, and JUNO’s skin tingles in the absence of touch. JUNO stares at the vacated space until PETER slides onto the couch beside him, and then he looks at the black screen.

“That’s not true,” says PETER. He takes JUNO’s chin and gently turns JUNO’s face to his. The morning light falls across his soft hair. “I’ve been seeing it in your eyes, in the way you look at yourself in the mirror when you think I’m not looking. I notice, Juno.”

JUNO is afraid he’s going to say something like, _It’s the past, still, eating you, only I don’t understand how,_ and then PETER says, “What do you remember?” He says it as if he’s rehearsed the saying. His intense eyes hold JUNO’s, and for the first time in months, JUNO wants to run.

Even when JUNO closes his eyes, he can’t get away from them.

He says, “Nothing.” He says it as honestly as he can. There is very little he knows with more certainty.

PETER shifts his hand to cup JUNO’s face. His thumb strokes the peach fuzz there. Even now, at the height of domesticity, it sends shivers through JUNO. “Nothing. I see.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Not even us, out in the middle of the galaxy.” It’s soft enough to be a question, but JUNO knows PETER better than that.

Sighing, JUNO reaches up and takes that hand. He presses it harder against his cheek. He says, “No, that part I remember.”

There is something dark and melancholy in PETER’s face, something fighting to exist. Washed away like waves; washed back. “What happened to us, Juno? When I look at you, I don’t see the same lady I saw on that trip. You’re happy, yes, but there’s so much THEIA behind your eyes, and not as much Juno Steel.”

“That’s interesting,” says JUNO, “because I’ve been feeling the exact opposite. Like there’s not enough THEIA. Like I got anesthetic in the wrong place, or it wore off too soon.”

He is trying to read the world in PETER’s eyes, but they shine like a screen.

“I need to,” JUNO begins, and cuts himself short.

“What, baby?”

JUNO takes a deep breath. “I need to know.”

“Then ask it.” In PETER’s practical voice, it’s so simple. And JUNO laughs, bright and full of mirth. Already he is expecting the Soul to shut down his questioning, to turn his mind to sweeter subjects. “I mean it. The only bad question is the question you never ask,” says PETER.

And JUNO says, “Stay with me.” He feels like he has said this before, _Stay with me._ But he needs to know why his whole past is a blank, a curtain he can’t find a break in, a door he doesn’t have the key to. And it’s _his_ past.

But PETER is here, holding his hand, and he has nothing to hide.

He says, “THEIA, let me see my memories.”

ANY SPECIFICATIONS, USER.JUNOSTEEL…?

Here the world spins out its thousand possibilities — each a door, each a hundred others closed. He doesn’t know why he keeps coming up against the wall of his Soul’s protocol when he digs for answers — what’s being hidden from him and why. “You called me… _little monster_.”

It rings in his head, first in his voice and then in the THEIA’s. But something burning and freezing in his gut rises up all at once, and he knows, without the THEIA sliding away to reveal it, who said it and how it sounded in her mouth.

“Are you okay?” It’s PETER’s voice. JUNO realizes he’s shaking, his body folded over his knees, a hand soft on his back.

 _I’m not the only one,_ he tells his Soul inside his head, because if he breaks, he wants to do it with dignity. _USER.LITTLEMONSTER. That’s what you called me._

YOU ARE USER.JUNOSTEEL. THIS NAME IS NOT IN MY SYSTEM. WOULD YOU LIKE TO CONDUCT A SEARCH?

“Yeah,” says JUNO, out loud, because he is standing where the sand gives way to the drop and he doesn’t know how long it will hold, so what the hell? “Sure. I want to know why you used it.”

BUT IT IS IN YOUR MEMORY DATABANK.

“So you’re telling me you rooted around in my head and used… that against me before you even registered me in the system? That doesn’t sound like helpful programming.”

I DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT.

“Of course you don’t.” JUNO spasms; he wants to punch something, suddenly, fiercely, with his whole body. He bites his lip.

PETER doesn’t leave. He takes JUNO’s hand and strokes it until it relaxes.

I NEVER MEANT TO CAUSE YOU DISTRESS.

He can almost forget it’s a computer program when it says things like that, like emotions are more than zeroes and ones to it, like it feels them too. Like it’s a friend.

And it is a friend. It could be a friend. It would be so easy to let it. He wonders, briefly, why it’s letting him have this conversation now, why it isn’t administering its happiness like a sedative. But there are questions he still needs answered, and Juno Steel is nothing if not persistent.

His mother’s voice is an echo in his mind, so he says, _Show me that._ And his Soul pulls the curtains back.

Juno Steel walks into a dark room. At the end of it, there sits a bunk bed, half-illuminated, the covers unmade on both mattresses. He has a lifeline around his waist, and his hands swing in fists at his sides. Someone outside of this room is holding him close, holding him so he can enter and see what he needs to see.

He sits on the bottom bunk and surveys the room, but there is nothing to see. He strains both his eyes to see the center of the room, where the dark is paler.

And then, into the only visible patch walks himself. He is pulling a t-shirt off; it is still bunched around his elbows, and he cannot see the face. In the center of his chest glitters the THEIA_SOUL. Juno has to lean forward, elbows on his knees, to keep from banging his head on the top bunk.

The shirt comes down. And it’s not him. It’s not just that the man has both his eyes; it has more to do with the way his muscles ripple as he straightens out the shirt, the way Juno could see all of his ribs. The way his forearms and shoulders are unblemished.

“Benten,” whispers Juno. Benten doesn’t look how Juno remembers. He’s older, Juno’s age; he looks like the last time Juno saw himself in the mirror before he lost his eye.

“Hey,” says Benten’s bright voice. It’s rougher now. “I thought you had that case, eating up your every hour.”

“Surprise,” says Juno’s voice. He holds up his hands to show them empty. “How are the kids?”

“Oh, a handful,” laughs Benten. “But so talented. I’m always thinking to myself, was I that talented when I was their age?”

“You know you were.”

“Aw, don’t give me a big head.”

“You kind of need it,” Juno tells him. It comes out of him naturally; he doesn’t have to think. The room is still dark, but slowly he is seeing more things around. They’re all Benten’s. The bed he sits on has only one mattress, now, and Juno leans back against the wall. He thinks about putting glow-in-the-dark stars up with Benten in their first bedroom, in their old house, and not telling their mother. He thinks about their mother finding them and laughing.

He thinks he could fall into that laugh. He thinks he would be safe there.

Benten says, “And they want to see what I’m working on, but, you know, if they think to themselves, Wow, that’s where I want to be when I graduate out of this level, it’s worth it.”

Juno knows what’s going to come out of his mouth, but there’s nothing he can do to stop it. “And Mom?” _Mom._ He says _Mom._ He says it like it’s easy, like the years and the relapses, the sleeping pills and the antidepressants, did nothing to sever their bond. Like he was ever her little monster. And he says, “She’s… good? She’s really good? Not half promises and empty plates good but… for real.”

“You’re acting like we didn’t just see her last weekend. Her birthday, remember?”

And he remembers — it’s just for a second, but it’s long enough. Things start to fall into place. In this room, he cares enough about his mother to celebrate her birthday.

Still, he thinks, _She was yours, anyway, not mine._ He never wanted her to be his. But he doesn’t say it.

This is a room no one can leave. The room is everything he needs it to be, big enough to hold every memory, every coming and going, but not so big it drowns him.

It drowns him.

And he can’t tell where the light is coming from. He can see Benten’s face, but he doesn’t know from which direction he is illuminated.

“Hey, Ben,” Juno asks. “How long have we had the Souls?”

Benten laughs, an airy sound. “What do you mean?”

“Nothing. I just. I know, I know I know, but can you tell me?”

“We were kids,” says Ben. “Six or seven, I think. Elementary school, anyway, but after you threw that teacher’s—who was it, Mx. Baxter?—computer out the window.”

Juno says, “I don’t remember that.”

Something goes dark for a second on Benten’s face. “That’s how it is, I guess. That’s just how it is.”

“And Mom?” Juno’s voice is a rasp.

“She stopped saying she’d be better and got better.” Benten sits on the bed beside Juno, pulling a leg up and leaning back on an elbow. His body takes up most of the bed. “Hey. What’s the matter? Don’t look at me like that. Talk to me.”

“You’re here.” Juno stares at Benten, but he isn’t speaking to him. Someone made the THEIA_SYSTEM and it fixed everything. All of it gone: the blood on the carpet, the hot smell of the gunshot, the way Mom cried and screamed at Juno to get out. The gun dropped, shining.

But he still remembers.

The affect in Benten’s voice beings Juno back into focus. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Juno laughs. “I’m good. I just. Yeah. Don’t worry about me.”

If the THEIA_SOUL could have been developed any earlier, Juno is sure it would have been. If Hyperion City could have been fixed a decade, two decades, three ago, it would have been. Who would he have been if he had been given a kind world? A mother who loved him and never hurt him, even if it wasn’t all her? Would he be kinder, too? Less hard edges and gruff facades and fewer people in his bed?

And the most important thing, staring at him with his own weathered face and those bright, bright eyes. Alive. It hits Juno so hard he doubles over, and Benten’s hand touches his shoulder.

Without Benten having to say a word, Juno understands. None of it happened. None of it had to happen.

Someone is saying, distantly, “Juno, Juno. Where are you, Juno?”

Juno opens his eye.

The THEIA says, YOU WANTED TO SEE. He has heard that voice before, lessons made into punishments and ground into him, and it is not the THEIA’s.

“Yeah,” says Juno. PETER is still warm beside him, but they aren’t holding hands anymore. Juno’s are in fists in his lap. He takes a deep breath, but it doesn’t calm him.

“Hey, THEIA.” It doesn’t respond, but he can feel its presence in his head. “If I ever ask for this again, don’t let me have it.”

The THEIA says, NOTED, USER.LITTLEMONSTER.

He can feel the programmed malice ripple through its voice.

For a second, he was out. He touched the world as it could have been. But if his past had been locked behind a door before, now the door is white and devoid of even a knob to turn. Its message comes through clear as glass: he tried to escape, and that’s not an option in New Hyperion. So he’d better get used to his new designation.

There is a city filled with little Benten and Juno Steels, filled with mothers who scream their throats raw and fathers who drink, or drank, because in this city, everyone has a Soul. So maybe it goes like this: There is a city filled with Bentens who lived, and will live, and are still living. Whose mothers never fingered a gun. They are smiling across this smiling city, without knowing that melancholy, everyday fear that characterized Juno’s childhood. Without ever knowing what they escaped.

And Juno feels so alone.

* * *

PETER is different, now. Where once his face was a sanctuary, now Juno sees something sharp-eyed and uncanny. He wears the same expressions, of course. His sharp-nailed fingers feel the same. He wears the same two weeks of clothes, and Juno gets to know every combination. He dresses there in the bedroom and lets Juno watch, and, of course, Juno does.

But the way he looks at Juno, like he can’t read him after months of perfect synchrony, makes Juno worry. There’s a wall between them and Juno can’t see the shape of it, can’t see where it begins or ends.

And in Juno’s head, his THEIA Soul calls him its little monster. It says it in his voice; it says it in his mother’s. Once that starts, Juno can’t shake it.

Once, he would have retreated into the THEIA, but now he retreats into himself. He starts staying up late. Every time he closes his eyes, he sees that apartment in Oldtown — always something broken on the counter, the doors swinging off their hinges, mold and water stains and him and Ben re-wearing underwear because they couldn’t find enough spare change for the laundromat. He can’t sleep, because behind every drowsy eye is an open window, and beyond that, his past.

He sees them with his eyes open, too.

His past is open to him, and there is no beauty in it. Because the THEIA never gives him pleasant memories — the triumph of a solved case, days off chatting with Rita in the office while the city went on below their window, the quiet beauty of the city at 4 a.m. He has to dig for these. Even now, his Soul only gives him the parts that ravage him.

So he creeps into the living room in the middle of the night and sits out so long that he falls asleep there, the buildings through the window fading from black.

“I didn’t do something, did I?” asks PETER the morning after, the second time this happens.

“No,” says Juno. “It’s my head. It’s nothing. I’ll get used to it.”

But PETER starts staying up with him. They sit on the bed, or PETER sits with Juno’s head in his lap, and they talk.

Juno says, “I think there’s something wrong with my Soul.”

“So it’s not just me,” says PETER. It’s so blunt; it lodges in Juno.

“It’s not broken or anything. At least, not that I think. It’s right here.” Juno lifts his shirt and PETER’s hand goes immediately to the skin of his stomach. “But it… I’m going to figure it out.”

Juno wants to say, I miss you, but he doesn’t. PETER has never been closer to him than during these late talks, and yet.

And yet, he is in a world that Juno cannot enter. The quiet happiness in his eyes, joy at life’s smallest motions. To Juno, it looks terribly small. Maybe this is because Juno can see what everything means — or he wants to.

And through it all, old memories come up unbidden. Old feelings, old fears.

That’s not right, either. He’s spent a lifetime controlling them, keeping them down, devouring them before they could devour him.

Their mouths are lined with sharp teeth, and their breaths rustle the hair on his legs.

 _Please,_ he asks the titan in his head, the THEIA. _Take it away._

I CAN’T DO THAT, it tells him. It keeps saying that.

_Why not?_

THE REQUESTED COURSE OF ACTION IS NOT POSSIBLE AT THIS TIME. DEBUGGING IN…

 _Yeah,_ thinks Juno. _Yeah. Do that. Sync me up. Put me back in the system. I don’t care, just make it okay._

What it means, Juno thinks, is this: The THEIA alone has control of his memories, and if he wants it back, he’d better learn how to be grateful.

* * *

Juno wakes in a puddle of blood, and it isn’t his. It pools on the blankets, soaked up by the mattress. He sinks into it. In panic, he claws for PETER, but in sleep, PETER’s body is a dead weight. It rolls toward Juno, and Juno’s throat fills with bile. How many times does he have to see the dead before he can stand it? How many times does he have to touch them before it stops feeling like the first time?

But PETER wakes, breathing hard and startled. His hands are raised to catch Juno’s. It takes a full minute for him to settle into his skin, for his bright eyes to calm. He says, “Are you okay?”

“I,” says Juno, while the fear drains out of him. It leaves him cold. “Yeah. I’m fine. Sorry. I’m… I’m sorry.”

Because PETER is pale in his pajamas, the comforter tossed down around his waist from Juno’s scramble, and there is no blood. The air tastes like morning, like PETER’s breath.

“Bad dream?” says PETER.

“Yeah. That’s what it was.”

But PETER looks at him with narrowed eyes for another minute. “You can tell me, you know.”

“I know. And I’m pretty sure it was a dream.”

“Do you want to talk?”

“No,” says Juno. “I’m gonna… splash some water on my face. Be back in a second.”

Shivering, he pulls the bathroom door closed behind him and turns on the light. He considers staying in shadow, where he doesn’t have to look at the shape of himself, but shadows hold a thousand other shapes and he doesn’t want to see any of them.

He turns on the faucet and lets it run. He holds a hand in the stream while it warms up.

Yes, he knows what’s going on. His Soul, sectioned off from the system, digging through his worst memories and flinging them against him, flooding him with them. Punishing him, still, for his noncompliance.

He splashes his face and runs his hands down his cheeks. This trick is supposed to wake him up, to bring him back to himself, to remind him he’s alive, but he’s done it so many times his whole life long that mostly it just gets water on his face.

 _Stop it,_ he tells his Soul. _I’ll stay. I’ll be good._ And then he laughs at himself, pleading with a computer.

Juno reaches for the hand towel and folds it in his hands, setting it on the corner of the sink. He plunges his whole head under the faucet. The shock of it runs through him, and the shadows flee. He is Juno Steel. He is nobody’s monster.

Still dripping, he lifts his shirt up and puts his hands around the Soul, fitting his fingernails into the crack between its surface and his skin. His skin dips beneath the pressure, but the Soul remains still. He can barely see the Soul looking down, so he watches himself in the mirror. His shirt catches on his forearms.

“I’m getting out whether you want me to or not,” he says around clenched teeth. “I’m not going to live like this.” His heavy hair drips onto his shoulders, into the basin.

He says, “I’m not your goddamn monster. Don’t you ever call me that again.” And he tugs.

The first spark of pain makes him dizzy. Colored spots flick in front of his image in the mirror. And, damn, it feels good. He feels like himself.

WHAT ARE YOU DOING? WHAT ARE YOU—? USER.LITTLEMONSTER.

“Goddamn it.” He tugs again. This time, something cracks — not enough to make a sound, but enough to feel. His fingernail, he thinks. In the mirror, a trickle of blood runs from underneath the Soul down his sternum. And a sharp line of pain arcs from his chest up to his neck and inside his brain.

He’s panting now, his breath ragged and his body shaking, but he’s determined to get the Soul of if it kills him. And it doesn’t listen to him anymore, so this is his last course of action. Still, it takes everything in him to keep from crying out.

It’s excruciating.

The THEIA is singing its insults in his head, its sharp, gleeful derisions. It flings his past against him. The faucet is still running and the THEIA drowns him in it. It is telling him, STOP, STOP, and it is telling him, YOU ARE NOTHING.

It is telling him, YOU NEVER WERE.

Juno has to remove one hand to brace himself against the sink so he doesn’t collapse. His muscles don’t feel like his.

And then, in a second, he doesn’t feel his muscles at all. He doesn’t feel the cold presence of the Soul, or the sink beneath his palm, or his legs. Instead, in the mirror, he watches himself release the Soul. One of his fingertips is bloody, but his hands are already moving. Holding up his shirt, he takes the hand towel and wipes the thin trail of blood.

“No,” he growls. “You don’t get to do this to me.”

There is blood on the pale towel, and half of it is damp.

A knock comes at the bathroom door, faint through the water in Juno’s ears.

“You okay in there?” says PETER. “Can I come in?”

“No.” Then, “One second.”

“Are you in pain? You sound—”

Juno pulls his shirt down and turns off the faucet.

When PETER enters, Juno is sitting on the toilet lid, the towel in his hands, his hair dripping. PETER crouches on the floor before Juno and takes the towel. Carefully, he reaches up and dries Juno’s hair. Juno closes his eye and lets him. It’s so tender, so gentle, but Juno no longer knows how to hold this happiness without tempering it with bitterness. Nostalgia, he thinks, or melancholy. He can’t think of the name.

“What happened here?”

“What?”

PETER holds up the towel, fingers carefully spread around the smear of blood. He doesn’t have to say a word. So Juno raises his hand, where the dribble from his nail has spread down to his knuckle. “I’m worried about you,” says PETER. It’s so soft Juno could pretend he’s missed it.

Instead, he laughs. “Broke a nail, I guess. It’s fine. My, uh, Soul can heal it in no time.”

“That’s no broken nail,” says PETER, but Juno is still laughing. It doesn’t sound like his voice. His body doesn’t feel like his body. PETER cleans the fingertip and bandages it, and Juno doesn’t feel a thing.

And even though PETER coaxes Juno to his feet, even though they brush shoulders making breakfast, even though PETER asks permission to kiss him and Juno gives it, Juno leaves a part of himself in that bathroom.

Yes, Juno tries to keep living with USER.PETERNUREYEV. But sometimes PETER looks at him and his mouth forms the words _little monster._ And then he says, _Juno,_ and his voice is so sweet that Juno almost cries.

Despite the nighttime talks, despite that morning in the bathroom, distance grows between them. Juno lets it. He doesn’t know how to sweep away this kind of dust. He’s always been better at cutting and running. And he’s beginning to think about doing it this time.

No one has ever come back, except PETER. No one has ever stayed, except him. Except RITA.

It’s hard to avoid all the emotions that thought brings up when he has nothing to occupy his time. His skill set has never lent itself to peace.

He knows this: he can’t live here, bur he can’t leave either.

Juno is not part of the system, not fully, and that means he is living this alone. Even though he shares a bed with PETER, shares meals and touches and tongues, this is his private hurtle, and he is getting tired. He misses what he had with PETER—with Nureyev—both on their honeymoon and before the Soul turned against him. He misses the old THEIA.

He misses himself.

* * *

Every day, the THEIA gets a little bit louder. Every day, PETER gets a little bit further away. There is a wall rising between them, and Juno is not sure PETER sees his hand on the glass.

Juno thinks about deserts a lot, their barren beauty, their hungry skies, while he cooks dinner and showers, while he goes on long walks and scrolls through job listings on his comms. He thinks about what lies beyond New Hyperion, radiation and free air and no THEIA. And he keeps the news on a lot. His Soul won’t give him answers, and he remembers enough of the fear that dominated his first forty-eight hours in New Hyperion to know not to let PETER know just how broken his Soul is.

It would be so easy to ask for a new Soul, to swap his heart out for a newer, more perfect one, but the fear runs through his blood.

PETER is not the only person on this planet he worries about seeing through him. His landlord. RITA, in her apartment with her sharp eyes blank and happy, saying in the slowest voice he’s ever heard her speak in, _It wants you to be better. You could give it control. You could give it anything._

For a time, she was right. And if it would take him, he would give it everything again. He knows this.

And he has always been afraid of being seen through. He has been holding on with his fingernails. He has been waiting for the morning.

Juno wonders, too, if he could find the mayor, if he could change something. Or even RITA. Didn’t she say she worked in the heart of the THEIA_SYSTEM? But anything he could ask them, he could ask PETER, and if he isn’t asking, he must have a reason.

Besides, he isn’t sure the problem lies in the Soul. He’s beginning to think it’s him. And it’s so comfortable, so easy, to think this way.

Mostly PETER’s eyes are complicated, and sometimes Juno sees something sad in them. When he does, he watches hard until the emotion smooths itself over. It looks so natural, so smooth it must be practiced.

“What’s wrong?” says PETER when he catches Juno looking, and Juno knows he’s deflecting. But he doesn’t know why.

Instead, Juno tries to figure out how to answer. _This is what I wanted,_ he wants to say. _You’re all I wanted. That’s why this life, this beautiful life, was what it was._ But he was reckless and foolhardy and he broke it first. There’s no getting away from that.

He is realizing, now, that his dreams and PETER’s made the shape of their life, because he has a lot of time with his dreams. His thwarted dreams, anyway.

He thinks about PETER on their honeymoon trip, saying, _I know your past is a part of you, and nothing will ever change that, but, Juno, when and if you’re ready to tell me about it, I’m ready to listen._

Has Juno not done everything already to remove the Soul from PETER, to bring him home? Has he not searched everywhere, gone to its source? Stared O’Flaherty in the eyes?

Did he not give up?

The walls of PETER and his apartment grow closer every day. It occurs to Juno that he’s making it all up, that his experience with his Soul is tinting the world with paranoia, but it’s better to be vigilant.

And then, one day, PETER says, “To tell you the truth, I’m scared.”

Just like that, out of nowhere. Silence and sirens in the street and then… that.

He’s in the bathroom, blow drying his hair, and Juno’s drawing up the grocery list. PETER says it with the dryer on. He says it with enough certainty and volume that Juno is sure he has practiced it in his head, fast as though if he didn’t say it now, he’d never get it out.

“What’s this about?” says Juno. It’s gentle, but not gentle enough, because PETER’s shoulders tense. He wants to say, _I didn’t think the THEIA let you be afraid,_ but it’s so crass in his head that he bites it down.

“It’s not about you, it’s… I don’t know. Forget it.”

It’s a dance they do, each offering each other a slice of their doubt and retracting it. Sitting with the _redacted_ s of their hearts. There is a black space in PETER and he is letting Juno see. He said, _I’m scared,_ and his voice sounded scared to say it.

“Hey,” says Juno. He leaves his list on the coffee table and goes to the bathroom door. “You can talk to me. I want to help. What are you afraid of?”

Turning off the dryer, PETER bites his lip. He leaves the dryer on the side of the sink and picks up his glasses instead, putting them on. For a second, silence as he stares at himself in the mirror. He lifts Juno’s comb and pulls it through his hair. “I know, Juno. It’s just… I’m trying to find a workaround. And if I say it aloud, I’m afraid I’ll lose it for good.”

Juno steps into the bathroom. PETER’s eyes are lucid and maybe a little wet. Juno can’t tell, because the lights aren’t on.

PETER says, “Despite life being what it is here on Mars, there’s a whole world out there that hasn’t forgotten us.”

“You’re worried about the past catching up to you.”

“Not… exactly,” says PETER. “The past is a complicated beast. I’m scared of.” And he lowers his voice to a whisper. “Forgetting. As it stands, the fact that my name, my real name, is part of this—of the whole thing? Half of who I am is built around protecting it. If I lose what made it special, do I lose me?” His face is drawn. He reaches up to massage a temple. “And I’m scared I’m not going to remember _this_ long enough for it to mean anything. For me to mean anything. Juno?”

“I’m here,” says Juno. “Hey. C’mere. I’ve got you.” He lets go of PETER’s hand for a second and backs out of the bathroom. Barefooted, PETER follows him. Juno sits PETER at the kitchen table and takes the comb from his hand. While PETER rests his elbows on the table, Juno combs PETER’s soft, shower-damp hair. PETER’s head bobs with the movement. He is very quiet.

Juno lets the silence spread out, PETER’s hair silky in his hands. It’s growing out; he’ll need a haircut soon.

And then, when it seems that PETER will let silence spread forever, Juno says, “Peter, can you tell me, honestly, what the best part of the THEIA is?” He is going to say, when PETER answers, _Can you remember when you last felt that? Can I help you get it back?_

But PETER says, “That I don’t have to see you in pain.”

It slams into Juno, and he has to look away so PETER can’t see his eye.

PETER sighs. Juno knows him well enough to know that he keeps most of his thoughts behind his teeth, even when he’s trying to be open, and he’s speaking around one hell of a gag right now. But if PETER’s nothing else, he’s clever; he knows a dozen workarounds to every possible dilemma. He is slipping the ropes of the THEIA as he speaks, and suddenly Juno is terrified for the Soul to take back control.

“And I saw, for the first time, a version of me that I wanted to be.”

Juno doesn’t say, _What about our trip?_ because he knows. He has dealt with the same doubts. He stands inside the empty room of himself, looking for a door, and no one, no lover, no friend, has ever found a way inside.

But he was trying to let PETER in. He was happy, then. PETER made him happy, and if that was step one, well, he wanted to stand on that step for as long as he could.

“Living’s hard,” says PETER in a distant voice, “and living for yourself is harder, but I don’t want to lose it.” Reaching up, his long fingers brush Juno’s, but he doesn’t grab hold.

Juno wants to say, _Haven’t you been living for yourself forever?_ But it sounds unkind, even in his head.

PETER continues. “I don’t want to lose knowing what I’m living for, and why.” There is a tremor in his voice, but his head is very still as Juno brushes his hair.

And suddenly, desperately, more than anything, Juno wants to tell PETER the truth. He wants to give PETER his past, in words if he has to. He has no pill this time, no magic doorway from his mind to PETER’s, no promise that the unexplainable could be explained.

He is learning to live his own life, or he was trying to.

He wants to tell PETER that he is seeing it even now behind his eyes. He wants to give PETER a name, say he had a brother once and still does; he wants to lay out his past; he wants to match PETER’s offering to him, so long ago. To meet it with one of his own. He wants to breach that hurt, wants someone to hold his hand.

Wants to hurt with it, hurt with anything, wants to be alive, to be real. Wants it more because of the THEIA crawling through his ribcage, throwing his vertebrae like frisbees.

He wants to say, This is how it felt, in that room. How it didn’t feel good. PETER would be glad to know that. It just felt strange. How when he surfaced in the hospital, he felt angry. How he hoped he’d never have to see anyone he knew ever again so he wouldn’t have to say, _I didn’t save my brother and I couldn’t even do this._

How the melancholy hung over him when he returned to work the next day, and he was still alive and his brother was still dead.

How he still didn’t want to live.

He wants PETER to hear it from him in words, even if PETER will never look at him again — not in his arms alone, arms that PETER kisses when their shirts come off; not in files or cloud storage or old medical records saved in HCPD databases. He wants to say, _Let me try to be better,_ but not like this. Not with the past rubbed clean like the desert after a sandstorm, but because he earned it. Because he fought with everything he had.

And, goddamn it, Ramses O’Flaherty took that away from him. Ramses with his THEIA_OPERATINGSYSTEM that probed Juno’s memories and found where he hurt the most and used it to put him in his place.

Which means, Juno thinks, his fingertips running through PETER’s hair, that if he’s going to do anything, he has to go to Ramses.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posting this early because I couldn't sit with that last chapter being the most recent one (though I made some updates so it's better). The worst has passed, I promise. Content warnings for this are suicidal thoughts (not near as graphic), referenced substance/drug abuse, referenced child abuse, and medical, but it's not nearly as bad as what has passed.
> 
> Thank you all so much for sticking with me through this one; it was a lot to get out and a lot to read, and I appreciate all of your support tremendously.

“I have to say, I’m pleased you found your way to a Soul,” says Mayor Ramses O’Flaherty. His office is as spacious as the first time, and in the daylight that falls through the high windows, Juno can see its shapes without the long shadows. There were monsters, here, when Juno first came, but now the only monster is him.

Because his Soul is singing, relentless. It says, RECONSIDER, USER.LITTLEMONSTER. It says, YOU DIDN’T THINK THIS WOULD BE EASY, DID YOU? NOTHING WILL EVER BE EASY FOR YOU.

 _Yeah,_ Juno thinks at it. It takes everything in him to keep his wits about him, to keep his thoughts in a straight line. He sits on the visitors’ chair and O’Flaherty sits behind his desk, and it feels like a stalemate. A standoff, maybe, both their guns loaded but holstered. Juno wonders where O’Flaherty is keeping his — in the top desk drawer, maybe, and certainly in the arms of the guard outside his office. But the door is closed, and O’Flaherty is not chipped, and that means what happens in this room is between only them.

Juno left PETER without saying where he was going, mumbling about that grocery run and saying, Stay, stay. Old habits make it easy to trust no one, but he can’t shake the feeling that it’s a betrayal. That it will taste bitter on PETER’s lips forever.

 _This is for you,_ he tells PETER in his head.

The rest of his head says, YOU’VE ALWAYS BEEN A PETULANT BRAT. YOU’VE ALWAYS BEEN SELFISH. And Juno knows better than to hope he can shake these thoughts. They chased him through the streets; they chased him through the open door of his and PETER’s apartment and overpowered the sound of cars skidding on a sharp corner, of laughter and keys jingling and music drifting out of open windows.

To O’Flaherty, he says, roughly, “What do you mean?”

The small mercy is that the Soul hasn’t taken his body, hasn’t glued his arms to his side and marched him home, hasn’t folded himself in PETER’s arms and in the quiet bliss he can’t look at anymore without the THEIA stirring inside his brain, turning it foul.

O’Flaherty spins a fountain pen around in his fingers. “You may not know me, Juno Steel, but I know you.”

“Cryptic,” says Juno, rough and wry as he can make it. “Care to elaborate?”

“I’ve known you for a long time, Juno.” O’Flaherty pushes his chair back and stretches his legs out. For a second, he looks so languid, so relaxed, that Juno’s blood boils. Then he says, “Do you want to know why I had the THEIA Soul developed?”

“Actually, yeah.”

Closing his eyes, O’Flaherty says, “It was because of people like your mother.”

A beat spreads out into a measure, and Juno is sure that if he dropped a pin now, it would never hit the ground. The distance between them stretches.

“What?” Juno manages.

“You’re smart,” says O’Flaherty, and it sounds like he’s talking to a kid. “And if you have access to your past, you’re a damn good PI. Yes, I’ve kept tabs on your career. I have a long history with you and your mother. We date back to her days at Northstar. You would know me by a different name, but I was very close to you kids. So tell me. Who am I, Juno Steel?”

There aren’t enough pieces, but Juno is used to working with scraps. The THEIA has been throwing enough of his past at him that he doesn’t have to dig. Yes, he remembers a man who would take him and his brother in after their mother had snapped one too many times in a day, who would smile at them, who would feed them generously and ask them about their days without any hidden conditions.

He looked nothing like Ramses O’Flaherty, but Juno can’t be sure he’s remembering right.

The world goes dangerous in a breath. Juno’s voice says, “What?”

“Say my name.”

Every trembling rung of the scaffolding around _Juno Steel_ that Juno has been standing on vanishes. In freefall, he looks at O’Flaherty from farther and farther away.

“Fuck you.” The rumble of it doesn’t sound like a voice, alien and warped.

Nothing changes on the mayor’s face. “Say my name.”

“Jack,” whispers Juno.

A smile spreads across the mayor’s face, his lips pulled back until he looks feral. “Good job.” Like Juno is still a kid. “Even when you were out of sight, even after that horrible tragedy with your brother… I never forgot. I wanted to prevent something like that from happening ever again.”

Juno Steel is standing in a black room, only this time, nothing is illuminated. Someone is breathing in it but he doesn’t know who. He has watched this play out — the Soul, developed twenty years earlier and just in time to save a life. And many more lives than that, probably, the city teeming and violent.

“Really?” he says. It’s bitter and derisive and one heartbeat from a second _fuck you_. “It took you that long? My secretary could have written the code in two days.”

“Progress takes time, Juno.”

Juno laughs a hollow laugh. “Yeah, I don’t buy it.”

“It is what it is, whether you believe me or not.” O’Flaherty—Jack—waves a hand in the air. Dust motes swirl around his fingers like planets around a sun. “Think of it this way: I did it for you. Of everyone in this city, you needed it most, and people like you.”

“You’re too late, old man. It’s broken. And you don’t get to cite me as the reason for your sick human experiment.”

As though he hasn’t heard Juno, O’Flaherty says, “When the THEIA Project first spread to all of Hyperion City, I have to admit, I was concerned when I couldn’t find you in the database. And then, when you came to me, looking as though you’d been roughing it for days. You’ve made quite a name for yourself, you know. When you were a kid… well, we all knew what Benzaiten was going to be doing with the rest of his life, but you? Some people would have said it was either law enforcement or prison.” He says Hyperion City, not New Hyperion, as though the change is nothing more than cosmetic. Sunlight halos him; Juno can’t see his expression for the shadows. And it’s like O’Flaherty is in league with the THEIA, leveling his insecurities at him. Putting him down.

“Oh, I see,” says Juno. “You think I’m so hung up over something that happened decades ago. I’m grown up. I can handle my own shit.”

“But I knew where to look, Juno. What to look for. You deserved a better world.”

YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU FORFEITED, sings the THEIA in its calm, cold voice. Juno has given it a door, and he imagines he can feel its rising glee. YOU DON’T KNOW THE HALF OF IT.

“Shut up.”

“Excuse me?” says O’Flaherty. He is unfocused in Juno’s vision. He is focused on Juno like Juno is the only thing in the world, at this moment, worth looking at. His fountain pen drips ink onto his desk, his hands, but he doesn’t seem to notice.

“Technical issues,” Juno explains.

O’Flaherty steeples his fingers, the pen trapped between his knuckles. “I see.”

YOU COULD HAVE HAD THE WORLD.

“Actually,” says Juno, and his voice sounds like it did when he was a teenager, unpolished and reckless. “I was hoping to talk to you about that. See, my Soul and I have had a bit of a disagreement. I wanted out, and it didn’t want to let me go. Negotiations failed, and—”

YOU WANTED TO GET BETTER. It throbs in time with Juno’s heartbeat. YOU THINK YOU CAN DO THAT ON YOUR OWN? I KNOW YOU, USER.LITTLEMONSTER.

How many times has he tried? With alcohol, with sleeping pills, with back-to-back cases, with days he wouldn’t go back to his apartment because he couldn’t face himself alone, with the lights off?

He says, “Get this thing out of my head. Goddamn it, O’Flaherty, I don’t want it. I’m sick of your goddamn computer using me against me.”

O’Flaherty sets his pen in the inkwell with deliberate movements. Juno can’t read the expression in his eyes. O’Flaherty says, “That’s not part of its programming.”

“Well, it’s happening.”

The THEIA sends a flash of fear through Juno, and he knows. It has studied him, his personality, his willpower, his memories, and he will not be able to overcome them without the Soul. But there is a man in a cushioned chair in front of him and if Juno just focuses on that, on this one conversation, he can make it out of this room. Even as he thinks that, though, the THEIA sends despair so powerful through him that he digs his fingernails into his thighs until it stings. He focuses on the black pain of it, on the way his breaths come out mercifully even.

O’Flaherty opens a notebook on the desk dark with cramped handwriting and inkblots, and he flips to a blank page. “I can refer you to one of my specialists, but, really, it’s a one in a billion chance that something like that could happen, that the programming could glitch and turn against the user. It is a shame that it happened to you. You, of everyone, I wanted it to be perfect for.”

“Bet you don’t even have a billion people in the system yet.” It’s a taunt and Juno knows it, but he can’t stop his mouth. “I’ve seen what you’re planning with Olympus Mons.”

“It’s not about numbers, Juno. It’s about doing the most good.” O’Flaherty’s voice goes soft, almost intimate. “Tell me. What was it really like, when it worked?”

Juno looks up at the ceiling. He can’t keep looking at those sharp, intense eyes. The longer he looks, the more likely he is to fall into them.

WOULD YOU LIKE TO… TELL THE TRUTH? says his Soul.

O’Flaherty says, “We have all the time in the world, but I want to hear it from you.”

That pen skidding across the page — O’Flaherty writing down a name, maybe, or a comms address. Juno says, “It told me I would be happy. I’m not, but I was. I was so happy. But it wasn’t me.”

“You were the best you could been.”

“I know that,” says Juno, “but if I don’t remember the past, who will? No one else alive knows what happened. Sure, there are court records, there are testimonies and minutes, but I was there, and I don’t want to—I can’t—forget that.” He sighs. “If I’m not able to carry Ben with him, if I don’t remember Sarah Steel enough to not be like her, who will? That’s what it’s about now, and that’s what it’s always been about. You and your program made damn sure I’d never forget.”

And O’Flaherty laughs. It’s a thin sound, not the full-belly laugh Juno was expecting. “Your mother suffered, and as long as you don’t, you’ll never risk being like her.”

“Shut up,” says Juno. “Just shut the hell up. If you’re not going to help me, I’ll find my own way out.”

“You’ll want this,” says O’Flaherty, and hands Juno the piece of paper. Its black scrawl is almost illegible. A name, a physical address. Juno pretends to study it, but he already knows he won’t go to anyone recommended by Ramses O’Flaherty. He’s going to get out of the system, and he’s going to do it on his own.

And in the doorway, Juno says, “This is my city. Don’t forget that.”

* * *

He finds himself back in Newtown. The THEIA doesn’t shut up for a single second. It does not sing, now; it screams. His foot hits pavement and the THEIA’s modulated alto goes, YOU’LL NEVER AMOUNT TO ANYTHING ON YOUR OWN.

It goes, LOOK WHAT YOU MADE FOR YOURSELF. A LIFE OF RUIN, OF RUNNING.

It’s so loud that Juno fears its voice is coming out through his throat. He certainly feels raw enough.

Juno ran the whole way from Town Hall, and by the time he passes under the Newtown gate, he’s gasping for breath, his throat stinging. After such a quiet life, he’s out of shape. Or maybe it’s just the panic.

Stopping inside the gate and hooking his hands behind his head, he looks up at Newtown, its buildings halfway to skyscrapers, no water damage on any corner, no satellite dishes broken on rooftops. There are more people now, he thinks, or maybe it is because he has felt them all in the crystalline network of the THEIA_SYSTEM.

As he walks through the neighborhood, he imagines the routes he would have taken had he grown up in a city like this. Here, the walk to school, laughing with Benten and Mercury and Sasha; here the shortcut through what is now a private courtyard teeming with plant life ;here the corner where he pushed Sasha’s shoulder and she pushed him before she turned toward her home. Here, probably, the grocery store they would have used, the convenience store—nicer than any convenience store from Oldtown, certainly—where Ben would pick up packs of gum and bags of ice after an injury. Here, maybe, his mother’s workplace, a steady office job, her exhaustion not so bone-deep and vicious.

There’s no use mourning for a life he never could have had, but it burns in his throat.

He’s mourned enough as is. He’s still mourning.

And it makes Juno uneasy. He doesn’t want to see this blank-slate town superimposed over his, and every day it is feeling less blank.

Juno ends up in that narrow, open-air park, the russet sky on the treetops, rendering them red as autumn. Even the statue is draped with red; it sinks into ever crevasse, every link in her armor; it makes her chin rosy. Juno has never seen a smile like that anywhere else.

Was O’Flaherty covering his tracks or sending a message? Did he hope Juno would see? Did he want to be clear that if Sarah and Ben couldn’t live there, he wasn’t going to smooth them over like the rest of town, make them shiny and keep the world from building its new histories overtop?

Juno doesn’t know when he starts shaking, but he knows he can’t get up until he stops. It rises in his throat— _fuck you,_ something shivering in him like a child—and he spits it on the pavement. He leaves a bit of himself there, too.

Juno will always come back here, he thinks, and he will always break before it. _Fuck you. Fuck you._ What O’Flaherty did was nothing short of evil. Holding up Benzaiten and saying, _I changed the world. I saved it from itself. From people like you._

Because really, how does Juno know that one uncontrolled show of temper, one brush of a trigger, away from a body ripped apart on his carpet? How does he know that he is not a threat to everyone who has ever loved him? He has certainly felt a rage like that. He has been out of control. He has given control away just to not have to look at the truth of himself. He wanted something softer, something smoother, a space in his head where he could laugh and feel good and mean it. Things, sometimes, that hit him faster and held him closer than drink.

He knew what was in him, and he spent a decade running away. Right through his twenties, through the good years that Benten would never get to see, in bars or sterile back rooms or college parties, watching people prick new tattoos into their skin and slosh beer across the floor. Leaving stains. Keeping his mouth shut at work. He wiped himself out, held the muzzle to his own head. How many times did he come that close? How many mornings did he wake aching and stiff as spiderwebs and sort through hazy memories like they were paper files, or did not sort them at all?

He managed, for a while. Held on to all his lives. And, meanwhile, his self was slipping away.

He clawed himself bloody to get out. He bled himself aching. He spent days in dark rooms, fingers tapping across his mattress, sheets pulled off the corners in the night. But he did it himself. And if he could hold onto himself for that, maybe he can banish the anger. Hold it inside himself. Focus, every day, on the person he wants to be.

Maybe he can want to be.

What Juno knows now is that he’s bitter and lost and with each step, he is finding it harder to stand on his own feet. He’s already thinking about when he’ll sleep next and where. He’s thinking he has one shot, so he’d better not miss. But he knows where RITA lives, and he thinks she’ll let him in.

* * *

“Tell me you can still hack,” Juno says. He sits among the tangle of wires on RITA’s living room floor, careful not to trap any beneath his body.

“Duh,” says RITA. She’s rolling back and forth in her office chair, barely missing Juno’s fingertips. “That’s like asking a computer if it can process data. It would be broken if it couldn’t. It wouldn’t be itself.”

“I know. It’s… things have been strange, I guess.”

It is hard to think around the ringing in his brain, and RITA’s high, rolling tone is easy to tune out. Juno stares at the cords, at RITA’s knees, and tries to focus on her words.

She is saying, “Look at this setup, LITTLEMONSTER. Does this look like the apartment of someone who can’t hack? Also, why are you asking? Normally you can’t figure out any more than how to turn the comms volume down.”

“That’s not my name,” Juno tells her.

“The system’s been all buggy when I’ve tried to look you up, and that’s what it says you’re called. I know you’re Mister Steel. So. What can I do for you?”

“So it’s that bad,” says Juno.

RITA’s apartment is made of the same material as PETER’s, though the shape of it is different. RITA has less furniture and more desks and floor space devoted to screens and terminals and cords, and most of these are covered with discarded snack bags. Juno stares at the wires as though he knows the first thing about them. RITA sounds more like herself than when he visited with PETER, and that gives him hope.

He closes his eyes and focuses on the tense place where his worries sit in his gut. Slowly, he says, “I know everything we say is probably going to be recorded and stored somewhere, the… central databank, I guess. So should we be talking in code?”

“You don’t know too much about computers, do you?”

“Never have.”

“Well, you see, boss, so long as we have a Soul in our body, we’re connected to the server. All our neuro-transmissions go straight back, which means we don’t have moment of privacy, even in our thoughts. The good news, though, is that since the whole city’s got a Soul, mostly the system doesn’t care what you or I are thinking. Nobody’s going through the security footage on our thoughts. Not unless we do something big enough to put us on the map.”

“I think it might be. Going through, looking at our thoughts.”

“Why?” says RITA.

Juno speaks before he has a chance to turn it over in his head. “Because I tried to break free and my Soul turned on me.” A beat. “It knows everything I’ve ever thought, and… that’s not a good thing.”

“Oh!” says RITA. “I can hack you no problem. You know when I said I work on the mainframe? My programming skills are unrivaled in this city, and I’m not saying that to brag.”

“You can hack me?”

“Absolutely. It’ll take a bit of time, but I know absolutely almost everything about how these bad boys work and let me tell you, Mister Steel, I’ve been wanting to try something like this out, but you can’t just go around asking people—I mean you _could,_ but you know me and, anyway, I tried it on myself already.”

Juno laughs, short and sharp. “You hacked yourself.”

Something self-conscious creeps into RITA’s tone. “Yeah? I wasn’t gonna use just anybody as the guinea pig, just in case something went wrong, even though I was pretty sure, like almost ninety percent sure it wouldn’t, and I figured, hey, if I showed up to work and I was broken, somebody’d fix me up in no time, so no sweat. You’re probably right that this whole conversation is being recorded, though it might not be reviewed for a couple of days if I mark it right, and anyway, once the Soul’s out, you’ve got nothing to worry about. Also, I figured out a way to temporarily block transmissions from my Soul. You don’t think I’d just tell you all of that and not take any precautions.”

“I’m impressed,” says Juno. “So. What do you need me to do.”

RITA hums. “Just relax, Mister Steel, and let Rita take care of it. It’s gonna be real boring for like five minutes, so make yourself at home and I’ll let you know when you need to lie down. It wasn’t exactly pleasant when I did it to myself but it doesn’t knock you out or nothing.”

The sound of typing fills up the living room. Juno’s stomach rumbles. RITA glances up from her screens. She says, “Don’t say anything about the state my fridge, I swear I have food even you couldn’t turn down.”

She lets Juno root around in her fridge, and she grabs a snack bag from the counter when she follows him back to the living room. From her window, the city looks a thousand miles away. Juno doesn’t look for long.

He lays back on the sofa like he’s at the doctor’s. RITA types away on two keyboards at once, and somehow manages to eat chips between strokes.

“Rita. I don’t just want you to take me off the system, or to quiet this damn thing telling me my every flaw every second. I want to set Hyperion City free.”

RITA beams. “I was beginning to think you weren’t going to ask. I had a plan all ready and everything. You ready to hear it?”

“Shoot, Rita.”

“There’s nothing I can do, because the mainframe is guarded all the time, like really heavily guarded, and I’m only five foot one, right, and also because it’s way too complicated for one me. It took like over a decade to put together, and that’s with loads of programmers. But the mayor is negotiating with the mayor of Olympus Mons, and I have some top secret, insider info as well: he’s going to test the THEIA expansion in the Cerberus Province.”

“No,” says Juno.

“Yep. So if you can get there and beam back to me everything you find, we can stop it before it even takes hold. Boom, the THEIA doesn’t spread, and also we know how it’s going to spread in the future.”

Juno runs a hand down his face. “How do you know all this?”

RITA taps her temple. “I’m smart that way.” She shoves a handful of chips into her mouth and wipes her hands on her skirt. Then she holds up a single finger and goes back to typing.

Softly, he says, “Are you sure we should go through with this? I mean, it’s making a lot of people happy. Changing a lot of lives for the better.” He is thinking about the little Benten and Juno Steels of the city, of the world. He is thinking that maybe the best thing is to do nothing. Maybe he deserves the siren in his ear telling him his mother still has claws around his throat and he never made it out, because that means that all the other Benten Steels get to live.

But he wants it gone. He is terrified of a galaxy controlled by the THEIA.

“I don’t see why you’re thinking like that, boss,” says RITA. “I’ve been monitoring your Soul since its first glitch—I know you, Mister Steel, and I couldn’t help myself when I first got word—and if there’s a flaw that big in the system, then it ain’t a very good system to begin with. Because that’s malice. That is deliberate evil. I’m gonna start the process. Basically all you gotta do is sit still and not think too loudly.”

Juno raises his eyebrows, and RITA waves it off. He says, “Kind of hard to do that when you’ve been unloading all that info on me.”

But a calm, focused look has come over RITA’s face. Her face is lit with blue light, and she looks like the RITA he knows. He puts his life in her hands.

She talks him through the whole process. Mostly he doesn’t feel anything, but the THEIA, in some redoubled approximation of a survival instinct, rises screaming in his ear. He clenches his hands around his opposite forearms, digging in until the sting reminds him what he’s fighting for. It’s complicated, RITA’s talk, but mostly it’s reassuring, too. As long as she’s talking, he thinks, nothing can go wrong.

It reminds him, suddenly, of Miasma. The anticipation of someone pulling something out from inside of him, of opening his whole mind, of giving it up.

It’s hard to think with the racket the THEIA is making, and Juno starts to wish for painkillers. His head throbs, and his eyes sting when he opens them, so he keeps them closed. He keeps waiting to feel something, some twinge in his mind, some pulse like that damned pill pulsed behind his eyelid. He thinks that if he feels something, he’ll know it’s working.

He doesn’t know how much time passes, only that at some point, RITA leans further forward in her chair and stops talking except for a few exclamations. _Uh-huh_ s and _almost got it_ s. His Soul goes very cold against his chest, inside his chest, and then it burns. He cries out, just once, and a hand flies up to touch it. It writhes inside his body, and he feels like he’s drowning. Even through his shirt, it stings. Juno settles for touching the skin around it — and he knows well, now, the shape of it on his body. He avoids touching it without looking down.

Oh, his Soul puts up a hell of a fight.

The noise turns to static in Juno’s mind, and that might go on for hours. It probably does, given the fading sunset he can see when he opens his eyes. He finds himself laying across the whole sofa, a blanket over his legs, sweat sticking to his neck. And when it begins to subside, he doesn’t notice.

HEY, MISTER STEEL, says Rita’s voice in the darkness of his brain.

“Rita?” says Juno, blinking open his eyes. He takes a moment with the sensation; beyond Rita’s voice, he hears nothing but soft black comfort.

THAT’S RIGHT. THE ONE AND ONLY.

The dark room comes into focus slowly. He massages his skull.

SO, says Rita in his head, and then she swivels toward him. “I took you off the system, and I made some modifications while I was at it. Number one: It’s like you were never there at all. You’re invisible. You can’t be tracked. It was probably the hardest bit of programming I’ve ever tried to get into, but I’m almost certain I did it. I’m the only person who’s got access to your Soul right now, so don’t you worry about being hacked back. Also, now that I’m in, I can counter-hack if anyone tries.” The triumph in her voice bleeds into Juno’s relief, and he smiles. She’s smiling too, a bright smile, all teeth.

“There we go,” says Rita. “Also I did away with that funny bit of code that said you could only recognize me as a THEIA user. Number two: to anyone else, you read like you’re chipped.”

“You got a lot done,” says Juno. His voice is a breath.

“Well.” Rita feigns modesty, and then they both laugh, heavy with relief. She wipes crumbs off her face, and they fall onto her keyboards. Her eyes are bright on him.

I’M GONNA STAY HERE, ’KAY? she says, inside his head and out of it.

 _Testing,_ comes Juno’s reply.

When Rita shoots back, nothing stirs the air between them. I’M YOUR EYES AND EARS, BUT YOU’RE ALSO MINE. ALSO, YOU SHOULD PROBABLY GET GOING.

Juno hugs her before he goes.

* * *

Juno is out of the city on a stolen motorbike with the helmet wobbling around his skull where the wind hits and wouldn’t Peter be so proud? There, on the street, one moment and he was off. Past the guards to the freeway and out of the dome. Its blueish light vanished all at once; the air was so heavy with dust that, without the helmet, he would have choked on it.

He’s driving faster than he can think, while the distance shivers from mirage to mirage. He sees a dozen cities before he reaches the outskirts of the Cerberus Province. In the distance, and then in the near distance, and then upon him all at once: the cracked lips of volcanoes, the cracked fingers.

DO YOU SEE ANY CONSTRUCTION?

_I’m feeding you what I’m looking at. See for yourself._

Mostly there is a sense of hollowness here. Not just the volcanoes, dormant but never asleep, their hot breath around him. He is going too quick to stop. He is hurtling toward a thing that wants to devour him.

But he was expecting eyes, sharp as Peter’s. Something rustling that isn’t the wind. One outpost, then another, low against the ground, doors leading down. Juno slows down, and the sand he’s kicked up behind him gets closer. Close enough to breathe; close enough to gag on, even through his helmet.

YEAH, THAT’S NOT A LOT THERE.

Sky red, sand red, and inside him, the promise of red. There’s no switch; it swings back at him, hot and sweet. Juno knows how to drive but that doesn’t mean he does it a lot. Doesn’t mean he’s any good at it. The bike wobbles and he can feel himself falling, the hard shoulder, his body thud-thudding against the bare ground, and then he rights himself. The rush of wind, his ears stinging with the speed, with the rattle of the bike. The body rushing through space; space rushing through the body. His hands shuddering on the handles.

And the dome—the domes, small and interlocking in the great grey shadows—rising toward the sky. He knows, in a second as swift as a torn fingernail, that he is too late. Still, he doesn’t turn the news on. Rita said he could be tracked through his comms, so he left it on her kitchen table. He’s out of the system for the first time since he was a teenager, fourteen maybe, and all the police precincts are shut down. Juno Steel is wholly and completely free.

Under a distant shadow, he sees a heavy tower. It glistens like new; it trembles under its weight. It rises up out of a low outpost, corrugated and depressed.

No, that’s the mirage. Because Juno is looking at a network of small cities, three-story buildings with rounded corners and the sun catching on the pale, bright walls. He had expected makeshift, tumbledown, sand-battered and leaning; he had expected people with fangs for teeth and claws for hands. Spacecraft parked just outside the town, battered and rusted. A frantic and dangerous humanity.

And maybe he was wrong all along. Maybe he can make himself believe it.

 _Stay with me,_ he asks Rita. The bike is sputtering, now, over the sand; he can feel grains against his neck, can hear them bounce against the helmet. _I’m gonna go in, scout for you. I guess that’s all I can do._

JUST ABOUT. BUT I WASN’T GOING TO LEAVE YOU.

He tells her he’s going in and makes a sharp right toward the tower. He knows he can’t just drive in, coughing up sand, so he crawls forward. His breath echoes back at him inside the helmet’s wide glass. It isn’t completely even.

The closer he gets, the more apparent the shine of the buildings. Streets that once were packed sand boast a layer of pavement. There is an order to the bodies down the narrow walkways. Juno stops in a side street on the outskirts and dismounts, but he keeps his helmet on. And, hoping Rita’s coding trick holds up to the scrutiny of hundreds of hardened criminals, he enters.

But they don’t look hardened. They wear the same happy faces as the people of New Hyperion. Many bear the scars of radiation damage, scars like nothing Juno has ever seen. At first, they turn to him with hostile eyes, and then something rings his chest. A bell, maybe; an alarm. Despair cloying as Peter’s cologne, his throat warm with it. And then those eyes smooth over with recognition.

It looks like a ghost town.

The clothes could have been theirs, sure, tailored and clean, but their faces could have been theirs, too. With his eye patch, he fits right in.

O’Flaherty’s dystopian devotion, his intentions hung in neon across every town in Cerberus. Even with the tinted visor, Juno keeps his head down. The THEIA moves so quick and he’s just one lady. He was a fool to think he could stop it.

And then, Rita’s voice, soft and unsure. MISTER STEEL?

Juno sniffs. _I’m… okay. I guess the game’s over, Rita. I’m out of cards._

He has seen the dizzy world, stars like freckles, stars like drops of blood, like toothpaste on lips before kissing Peter Nureyev breathless. Peter Nureyev there, waiting for Juno or maybe, if they’re both lucky, forgetting him.

The shadow of the side street gives way to a busy thoroughfare. Juno keeps close to the wall, peers into the sun. It doesn’t look like the desert, not with the blue-tinged sky, not with the smooth, white road. The tower rises over the street, two blocks away. Juno knows what he has to ask, but he doesn’t want to be alone.

The breath he takes shakes inside him.

_Rita, can you go to my apartment?_

In his head, he can see her expression, brow drawn, chewing on her lip. I’M STAYING WITH YOU.

_I’ve got this. I need you to check on… on Peter. Do whatever you have to. Hack him. Save him._

WHAT ABOUT YOU?

 _I’m not giving up. I’m getting the two of you out of here. You’re my family, and…_ And it might already be too late.

BUT YOU NEED ME HERE.

_Then stay. Don’t stop talking. Just, please, help him._

* * *

Rita was right, of course: he joined the crowd unnoticed and split off just as quietly. Rita is quiet while he picks his way through. He keeps his breath quiet. He knows a thing or two about sneaking around, a thing or two more about squaring his shoulders and raising his chin and acting like he belongs there.

And he belongs here, with the chipped criminal desert of Mars. People with shirt collars dipping to their navels, wearing their Souls like jewelry.

At the foot of the tower, Juno stops.

“I wouldn’t go in there if I were you.” Juno turns. Standing beside him as a woman with bold red hair pulled back in a heavy ponytail, the side of her face scarred. Half the people here scarred. No one emerges unscathed.

“Would you believe I have clearance?”

“Absolutely not.” She sounds like a real person, so Juno feels bad for what he’s going to do next.

_Rita?_

SORRY, comes Rita’s voice. I’M HAVING A CONVERSATION WITH YOUR BOYFRIEND. WELL, IT’S NOT EXACTLY A CONVERSATION, BUT—

_Whatever you did to make me show up in the system, I need you to do that now._

“You’re scared,” says the woman.

Rita’s voice goes quiet, and then his Soul warms. He watches as the woman’s face smooths out, her mismatched eyes, and she shrugs.

Juno steps inside. The lobby is cool and dark; it puts him in mind of being underground, of the old subway system.

_Guess there’s not too much I can do, huh._

THAT BAD?

_That bad._

Juno walks slowly, staying out of the light. He is careful not to touch the walls, to avoid leaving fingerprints. _I’m going in,_ he tells Rita. _I need to see._

JUST TRANSMIT IT TO ME. I’LL REVIEW IT IN A SEC. I’M IN YOUR APARTMENT, BUT IT’S GONNA BE HARD, BOSS, BECAUSE HE HASN’T BROKEN FREE IN THE SLIGHTEST. HERE, I’LL PUT YOU ON. MAYBE YOU CAN TALK TO HIM.

Juno’s stomach drops. And then:

“Juno?” says PETERNUREYEV. It echoes like a recording, swallowed up by Juno’s thoughts.

“Peter.” The word comes out before Juno thinks to be quiet. He wants to know that PETER has heard him.

Four doors split off from the back of the lobby, closed and unmarked. The lights aren’t motion-activated; there is one on the desk and a few overheads. Pillars like scaffolding hold the building up. The room warps like something seen underwater.

The riddle is this: There are four doors and no matter which one he opens, he’s still drowning.

“Juno, where did you go?” says PETER.

“I had to. I’m sorry. I’m coming back for you.” Juno is whispering. He spins around, trying to hold all the doors in his mind at once. What would he do, if he was a private eye still? Look for fingerprints, he thinks.

There are four doors and beyond one of them, his lover is coming back for him, but he doesn’t know which handle to turn. His lover is coming back. The back of his shoulders, the arch of his spine, the drumbeat of his footsteps. His lover is coming back, or maybe this: there are four doors and if he turns the wrong handle, Juno is never coming back himself.

“I miss you,” says PETER. “Darling, come home.”

“That’s very touching and all,” says Rita, “but I’m not just here to catch up.” Then she squeaks.

_Rita?_

“I see you.” It must be PETER. It might be Juno. It doesn’t sound like any of them. Rita squeaks again and she is hundreds of miles away. “You can’t run forever, Juno Steel.”

Juno pulls his jacket sleeve down over his fingers and turns a handle. The door sings smoothly open. Beyond it, a black void. He steps inside, holding onto the handle, and squints in. A closet, he thinks; a vacated office; a storeroom.

 _Rita, if you’re not busy, night vision would be great._ It takes herculean effort to focus on the shapes in front of him around his quick pulse, to hold himself in the moment enough to ask for a light.

A lurching moment of silence. Then: I’M REALLY BUSY, ACTUALLY. BUT… ACTIVATING NIGHT VISION.

It doesn’t resolve colors, but all at once he can see the piled shapes in the room, the dim light from monitors and keyboards. It’s an office space, busy with terminals and wires stretching back into the wall, coiled like spiders’ legs. Juno scans it in a second, taking in every bit of evidence — the angle of the chair, pushed back from the desk as if vacated recently by someone with every intention of coming back, everything tidy, not even a wire out of place. If he asked Rita, he could hook her up to the computer and she could get inside it, but why bother? If they’re going to launch an assault on the THEIA_SYSTEM, it would be smarter to go together. For Rita to walk into her workplace and for Juno to offer her cover.

It’s comfortable, inevitable, this despair, but he doesn’t want to tell Rita yet.

So, quietly, he steps back out and closes the door. He breathes against his metal; he can taste his breath.

With his dark vision, he tiptoes to the other doors. He presses his ear to each, listening for any speaking, scraping, seeking some sort of answer.

Even in Juno’s head, Rita’s voice is hushed and breathless. It is so quiet that he doesn’t jump. IT DIDN’T WORK. I DID EVERYTHING I COULD AND IT DIDN’T WORK. I’M OUT ON THE STAIRS WITH MY COMPUTER AND MY COMMS. I DON’T KNOW WHY I THOUGHT IT WOULD BE EASY. BUT I’M GONNA TRY AGAIN. I FIGURE IF I USE THE CODE I USED ON MYSELF, THAT’LL JAR HIM ENOUGH THAT I CAN BREAK HIM ALL THE WAY OUT.

_I trust you, Rita. If anyone can do this._

Maybe she smiles, because there’s a warm breath and a long moment of silence. YEAH, YEAH. ONLY PROBLEM IS HE’S A COUPLE DOORS DOWN THE HALL AND THERE ARE A COUPLE OF PEOPLE IN CLOSER PROXIMITY.

It takes a moment to click with Juno. _You know, Rita? If you break a couple of other Souls, I don’t think that would be too bad a thing._

Behind the third door, he hears footsteps, and he goes very still. Grunts, he thinks, and beeping. The real tower, the heart of Cerberus’s Souls. If he opens it, the game up, and Rita is preoccupied.

AND I’M WORRIED HE’S GONNA COME OUT FOR ME, ONLY I CAN’T GO ANY FURTHER AWAY BECAUSE THE PROGRAMMING IS SENSITIVE.

_Try, Rita._

I’M TRYING.

_Rita, we can’t outrun the THEIA. It got to the Cerberus Province long before I arrived, and it’s thoroughly settled-in. And your intel was good, I know it was._

GUESS IT DOESN’T LIKE BEING MEDDLED WITH. I THOUGHT I WAS BETTER. I THOUGHT—

A lurch, a silence.

 _Rita?_ Juno is out the front door; he skids on the sand. He throws up a hand to see in the sun.

JUNO… USER.JUNOSTEEL… USER… LITTLE…

His limbs burning with the chase, he turns, but there is nothing behind him. No bodies, no shapes tumbling out the tower door. In the sunlight, the town is ordered and chrome. The THEIA is in his head again and he can’t remember which way he came from.

He takes turn after turn, and the voice running in his head isn’t Rita’s.

THE EASIEST COURSE OF ACTION WOULD BE… GIVING UP

WOULD YOU LIKE TO… GIVE UP…?

_Rita? Goddamn it, are you there?_

The roar of the motorbike’s engine, the roar of sand as he does a sharp u-turn. His body roaring with blood.

The gasp of someone surfacing from bathwater. IT FOUND ME. GUESS I DIDN’T DO SUCH A GOOD JOB OF KEEPING IT OUT AFTER ALL. WE ALL KNEW I’D SCREW IT UP ONE DAY. I’M JUST… I’M SORRY.

_You didn’t screw up. You did more than anyone else here._

WOULD YOU LIKE TO…

_Hey, Rita._

YEAH, BOSS?

He zips down the road so fast he can’t breathe, sand kicked up in his eye. In his head, he begins to see the shape of a plan, and he laughs.

_Can you wipe the tower?_

WHAT? Her voice is high with panic.

_Do you know how to? Wipe the whole system. Can you do that?_

UM… THEORETICALLY. I’VE DONE A BIT OF RESEARCH, POKING AND PRODDING A BIT HERE AND THERE, BUT REAL CAREFUL NOT TO GET MYSELF NOTICED.

_Listen to me, Rita. Leave Peter. We’re on a timer but if you can get to the tower… It doesn’t matter what you do. Hack it, destroy its network, sever its connection to the Souls. Get yourself out._

YOU’RE WORRIED ABOUT ME.

_Damn right I am._

Rita sobs, a sudden, heartbreaking sound. MY FILES WERE DESTROYED. MY WHOLE COMPUTER, KAPUT. I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO, BOSS.

_You’re smart, Rita. You’re the smartest person I know. You hacked your own Soul. That’s amazing, Rita._

Like a revelation: IT DID FIGHT BACK.

_Then you know you can do this. But you have to act before it destroys that progress, so you don’t have time to wait for me. Go, now._

* * *

Despite the bike’s max speed, it’s a long journey back. The bike shudders and Juno doesn’t feel entirely in his body. He keeps Rita company. She tucks her computer away and sneaks out of PETER’s apartment. Her voice shudders in his head, wobbles between his thoughts.

Rita updates him on every step, every sight, every finding, as though Juno’s memory were some sort of backup hard drive. She stays on the line long enough to give Juno clearance to enter New Hyperion. He slows the bike just enough to account for pedestrians. He is a long way from PETER’s apartment, and even farther from Newtown.

I’M ABOUT TO GO IN, Rita tells him.

_Do you need backup?_

And then: I WORK HERE, REMEMBER? ’SIDES, I’M INSIDE ALREADY. I’VE GOT THIS. AND THANKS . JUST… COULD YOU STAY WITH—

All at once, the space in Juno’s head goes quiet. There is no static, no burn, no click, just a word a shoe that never drops.

 _Rita? Rita._ He says it aloud, too. He calls it into the afternoon.

It is like he can’t think, like half of his head has been ripped away. The silence holds a pillowcase over his face.

He makes his way through the rest of the city alone. It’s colder, now, and overloud. Juno has a window of time before school lets out, and he doesn’t have Rita to look out for him. He picks up his pace. He doesn’t have time to compose himself, but despite the burn in his diaphragm, he presses on.

PETER’s lets him in without a word, and oh, Juno has been here before. Shuddering, stranded, begging for an escape. He never could kick that part of him completely.

But PETER looks different as he opens the door, stepping aside with an elegant gesture. Sadder, perhaps. Melancholy. It’s in the eyes, in the wrinkles on his brow. He says, “Welcome home,” and his voice is more robotic than any THEIA.

Inside, when PETER flings himself dramatically onto a kitchen chair, Juno remains standing. With an arm draped over the chair back and his hair flung out of his eyes, PETER is statuesque. Unreadable.

“You were always going to leave me, weren’t you, Juno?” muses PETER. His eyelids droop.

“You want the truth?”

“I’m happy to play any part required of me, but I always want the truth. I’m sure you understand.”

Juno’s voice is ash in his throat. “I wasn’t. Not this time. I chose to stay with you, and I meant it.”

“You don’t have to lie to me.” PETER’s studies his hands, interlocking his fingers as though holding a lover’s hand. Juno watches that movement with something that feels like hunger, but mostly feels sad. “In a few minutes, my THEIA’s going to wipe it all away, and everything will be fine. I won’t even be angry. I won’t hold it against you.”

“I had to,” says Juno. “I had to get out.”

“I understand.” Behind PETER, the city that Juno doesn’t want to see. Lonely curtains still on either side of the window. “Of course you’ve only been gone for a day, but when your secretary dropped by, I knew. But I have had my share, you understand.”

“Your share?”

PETER chuckles. “Of empty beds in the morning. Of people who wouldn’t hold my hand in public. Of… well. And, of course, to fight against the THEIA is to fight against the soul of the city. Against me.”

“I wasn’t,” Juno tries, and it isn’t enough. “I didn’t mean to.”

“You make me so happy,” says PETER. “You. Not the Soul. You make me happier than I’ve been in a very long time. You make me look forward to waking up, because I get to see you. Sure, there is beauty in the world—so much it hurts, sometimes—but you are the most beautiful thing of all.”

“You make me happy, too,” says Juno. “But I don’t want it to be like this. I want you as yourself, Peter Nureyev.” He kneels beside PETER and rests his head on PETER’s thigh. The hand that touches his hair is warm and precise.

When the THEIA blurred the lines between them, PETER saw Juno for what he was, and now it rises sharp and sweet in Juno’s throat.

Juno doesn’t know how much is PETER talking and how much is the voice of the Soul. But it’s PETER’s mouth opening, PETER’s careful diction. PETER’s eyes misty behind his glasses. Juno remembers, because the thing was inside him once, too, and he knows: the Soul’s emotions are as real as any feeling PETER would have on his own.

And maybe Juno doesn’t want to pin this on PETER. Maybe he wants to take an inch of responsibility himself.

So Juno says, “And I’m not going anywhere.” Either the plan works or it doesn’t. It’s so simple he almost laughs.

“Don’t leave me again.” Maybe he knew: Juno standing in between the bathroom doorway and the front door, no lights on, his hands trembling in front of each lock. Through each door, the rest of his life. Through each door, a world to call home; through each, a sacrifice. Through one door is a Juno who won’t change, and through the other a Juno long past ready to give moving on another try, and whichever one Juno opens, he is still running away.

Or maybe his every trepidation was broadcast to the whole city. Maybe Juno would have left for good, the way PETER sees it, because he was off the system and he hadn’t said a word.

PETER says, “Don’t leave me.”

“Nureyev.” Juno’s voice breaks.

PETER’s eyes go clear. He reaches up and rubs his eyelids beneath his glasses. He looks old, grey streaks in his hair, those deep laughter lines around his eyes deepening.

“Here,” says Juno. He crouches beside PETER. “Give me your hands.”

PETER holds them out and Juno takes them gently. He runs his thumbs over PETER’s veins, his knuckles, his delicate fingers. PETER’s long nails scrape Juno’s wrists. They could plunge as deftly as any knife, and besides, Juno knows PETER has the guts to do it.

Juno says, “There is nothing in you I could ever ashamed of.”

“Sentimental, coming from you.” PETER gives a gentle laugh.

“I’m going to make you a promise that I’ll take very seriously. I’m here to stay, Nureyev. No matter what happens, whether Rita pulls it off at all, I’m here. If I can’t—” his voice catches, chokes “—if I can’t save anyone, if I can’t save you, Nureyev, if the THEIA Soul is inevitable across the solar system, hell, across the whole galaxy, I might as well stay someplace that matters, with someone who matters to me. I’m tired of running, Nureyev. My feet hurt. I think my heart hurts, too.”

Peter Nureyev saying, tiny and distant, _If you don’t want to come, I’ll leave without you._ Juno is careful to not echo that promise. To know you’ve broken a heart hurts almost as much as its breaking.

Quietly, quietly, Juno asks, _Rita?_ But nothing answers back. He doesn’t know what he’s waiting for — an earthquake, maybe. A light in PETER’s eyes. A bird, singing in the window. A shred of proof that there is anything in this world to believe in.

“I guess this is it,” he tells Peter Nureyev, master thief. “I love you.” He tips his head up, and Peter Nureyev leans down to meet it.

There are a million stars, yes, and a million stars going out overhead. Juno presses his body upward, upward, holding Nureyev’s lips until they’re both breathless.

And when the city shudders, all Juno feels is PETER’s pulse. Soft lips trailing lipstick along Juno’s jaw. Hands in Juno’s hair, pulling him up. Juno rises on his knees to meet PETER’s demands, his body aching electric. He puts his hands on PETER’s thighs and holds himself there, and the city is nothing outside of him. His body strains to hold this position, and it’s… god, it’s…

And PETER coughs into Juno’s mouth, short and shocked. He breaks the kiss and pulls a hand out of Juno’s hair, pulling it up to his chest. Juno glances down, too, but all he can see is PETER’s beautiful hand, unbuttoning his shirt. His hand are shaking and he breathes hard.

“Here,” Juno says, and then he isn’t sure he’s said it at all. But his hands reach up to PETER’s, and together, they pull the shirt open. The Soul sits so small in the center of PETER’s sternum, between the two neat scars. PETER’s hand shakes fiercely; he opens his mouth and a small, broken sound comes out.

USER, says PETER’s voice, labored and unsure. JUNOSTEEL…?

The burning starts in Juno’s ribs and reaches inside of him. It travels through his veins. He can feel part of himself detaching, severing inside of him. The voice he hears is nothing but static in his brain. It says:

THE THEIA_SYSTEM IS NOW… IS NOW… _OFFLINE_

Its voice wobbles, and then the Soul is just a heavy object dangling from his chest. Juno looks only to Peter Nureyev, his frightened eyes. His bare chest, his frantic hands touching the Soul.

And then Peter Nureyev gasps. He shudders, his eyes violent on Juno. A black sky.

Juno’s eye, stinging, as he watches. The Soul harmless on Peter Nureyev’s chest. The Soul hanging from Juno’s own, getting colder with every breath, even still inside of him. He can see to those later. There is too much waiting for him in this moment.

“Nureyev,” Juno whispers. “Let me.”

Nureyev meets Juno’s eyes and holds them. “Juno.” Juno closes his eyes, just for a second, and lets Nureyev’s voice have its way with his body.

They stay like that, Juno rising on his knees on the kitchen floor and Nureyev holding him, holding him like something too precious to ever let go. Hands on his shoulders, his wrists, in his hair. Hands brushing the base of Juno’s skull. Nureyev’s expression, desperate and wonder struck.

“I’ve got you,” says Juno. “I—I missed you.”

Nureyev exhales, shuddering. And all around them, the apartment pale and shining, but for the first time, Juno thinks it looks lived-in. He doesn’t take his eyes from Nureyev’s.

* * *

Rita buzzes in half an hour later. Juno and Nureyev are on the kitchen floor, side by side, their legs stretched out to touch the far wall. Juno leans against Nureyev’s shoulder, and Nureyev strokes Juno’s thigh. Mostly they just breathe. When they speak, it is so soft. They speak as though they don’t want to disturb the city. Closed windows keep the sounds out, but Juno can hear car alarms, voices raised in anger or in glee. Wonder hangs low as a cloud over Hyperion City.

“Do you remember it?” asks Juno.

“I,” says Nureyev. “I do. But it doesn’t feel right. Juno, whatever I did to you, whatever I said, I don’t know if I meant—”

“It’s okay. I know.”

When Nureyev sighs, the wave of it shakes Juno’s body. “It was real, when it was in me. It was me.”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have made us come back.”

Juno bites his lip and stares at the place where their thighs touch, but Nureyev says, “Look at me.”

For a second, Juno closes his eyes, and then he looks. Nureyev’s hair is tangled from Juno’s hands in it, his glasses crooked, his lipstick worn away and his lips smooth and soft. He looks tired. More than anything, Juno wants to let him sleep. To lead him to bed and tuck the covers around his neck. Juno knows he probably looks just as exhausted himself. That’s what they need, he thinks: one night, and then they’ll sort the whole thing out.

Nureyev says, “You did what you had to. Look at Hyperion City. You gave it another chance. Sure, the THEIA had lofty ideals, but in practice, it was suffocating.”

“Yeah,” says Juno, but he isn’t quite sure he believes it. “Do you think I made the right choice? What if I really hurt people?”

There are children who will wake up with mothers who hate them. There are mothers who will have to fill new scripts, and might go a few days without. There are college dropouts and college grads squandering their lives because they grew up and couldn’t get away from what they grew up with. There are gun stores with open doors; there are police stations putting their forces back together and violence, so much violence. The city teeming with it; the city bloody.

He’ll have to live with that forever.

Nureyev says, “Do you believe in humanity?”

Honestly, Juno says, “I don’t know.”

“No,” says Nureyev. “I suppose I don’t always believe either. I suppose… it’s a matter of trust, now. There will always be people like Rita, risking her life for a city of wild cards, and people like you. There will always be hope. I believe in this city, Juno, because I believe in you. And because I’ve seen it.”

Juno closes his eyes, then. “What do you want to do, Nureyev? Stay? Get out of here for good?”

Nureyev reaches for Juno’s chin and holds it gently. “This is your town. You get to call the shots. If you don’t want to leave, if you want to stay here for the rebuilding… Wherever you go, that’s where I’m going.” Nureyev’s face is open and tender, and Juno can feel the same inside himself. He threads his fingers with Nureyev’s, there beneath his chin.

For a second, Juno closes his eyes, holding onto that warmth. “I think I already know.”

“And?”

“It’ll take a long time for Mars to be my home again. Not because it’s different, but because there’s too much of me in it.”

“I understand,” says Nureyev, and Juno knows he means it.

Juno sighs, and Nureyev steers the conversation to lighter, warmer places, so that when the buzzer sounds, Nureyev is laughing. It warms even the growing cold embedded in Juno’s chest.

“Guess I’ll get that,” says Juno, but for a second he lingers. He twists his head to press a kiss to Nureyev’s neck.

Nureyev giggles. “Go on. I’ll be here when you get back.”

So Juno kisses Nureyev one more time and rises.

Through the intercom, Rita’s scratchy voice squeaks, “It worked!”

“Come on up and tell us all about it.”

When Rita enters, she brings the noisy city with her. Juno can hear chatter from the stairwell, can smell a cigarette. In her bag, she carries her laptop and comms, and her blouse flaps loose around her chest, where a few plasters have been slapped haphazardly over the space where the Soul sat. She has a couple of cuts on her face and her hands, scabbed and ugly, and a long smear of blood along one cheek, but she’s grinning. Her hair hangs loose around her shoulders.

“You’re amazing, Rita,” Juno tells her.

“I did what anyone woulda.”

“Not anyone would have climbed back into that tower knowing what you knew,” says Juno. “Not anyone could have broken out on their own, even if they had your skills. You’re truly remarkable. Maybe the only person on the whole planet who could have pulled it off.”

“Well. I did my best.”

Juno says, “How did you do it?”

And Rita beams, fierce and triumphant. “I went in through my own Soul. The THEIA learned so quick, but I learned, too, from what I did with yours, and I convinced it I wasn’t a threat. By the time it noticed that I wasn’t where I was supposed to be, I was most of the way in. It was really scary for a bit, a whole lot scary, really, but you were counting on me, Mister Steel, and I wasn’t gonna let you down.”

“That’s sweet, Rita. You saved the day.”

Rita’s lip trembles. “I’m a hero?”

In a second, she’ll say, _Just like in the streams?_ and launch into which streams in particular and Juno will let her, because she’s alive and the city can breathe its own air and maybe Juno didn’t believe in miracles until this moment, but he does now.

He says, “You’re a hero.”

From behind Juno, Nureyev says, “Hero of the day.”

“Hey, Mister Thief. It’s good to see you alive and not chipped.”

“Good to be alive,” says Nureyev. Juno turns to see him in the kitchen doorway. He has buttoned his shirt up to the waist. He still sounds tired, the kind of tired kisses and soft touches and maybe even rest can’t wash off. Juno hopes rest will do it.

“You’re definitely not going to try to kill me this time,” asks Rita.

“You have my word.”

And when Rita hugs Nureyev, he laughs.

“Your Soul,” says Juno when Rita steps back.

“Oh, no, you don’t get out of this without a hug,” Rita tells him.

Against his chest, she says, “I panicked a second when everything went out and ripped it out, but I wouldn’t say I’m an expert. I’m better with numbers and brackets and really I don’t want to see the inside of anyone else’s chest.”

“We’ll take care of it on our own. Got it. Help yourself to the kitchen if you can find anything you like.”

Rita sniffs once against Juno, and when she lets go, she rubs at her eyes. “I’m not crying,” she tells him, defensive, but her eyes and cheeks are red.

Juno says, “Me and—” and gestures to Nureyev.

“Peter,” says Nureyev.

“Yeah. I guess we’d better get to work on our chips.”

Juno strips his jacket while Nureyev disappears into the bathroom.

They turn all the lights on and leave the door open. Nureyev prods at his dangling Soul, pulling at his skin where it breaks. Juno digs around in the cupboards for gauze or plasters. The Soul’s wires have curled up like a dead spider’s legs. With a pair of tweezers, Nureyev prods it, reaches underneath, pulls out its dangling legs. He winces, but his eyes are hard as steel and he is not looking away.

“It’s going to leave quite the nasty scar, I’m afraid,” says Nureyev. His voice is flat and practical, but Juno knows to look deeper. “On all of us. They weren’t built to be removed.”

“I can do it,” says Juno. “Pull it out. You don’t have to do surgery on yourself.”

For a moment, Nureyev contemplates, then he hands Juno the tweezers. Juno hops up on the counter and leans in.

It takes a lot of maneuvering, but, gradually, Juno plucks one wire at a time from the carnage of Nureyev’s chest. Nureyev bites his lip and inhales sharply every time the tweezers brush a nerve, but that happens far less frequently than Juno had expected. The damage might be deep enough to leave a keloid, but if Juno is careful enough, it will just be an ordinary scar. Juno knows firsthand how remarkable the human body is, knows its propensity to heal from the deepest wounds, its desire to survive no matter how many times he’s found himself in that dark room.

Nureyev doesn’t bleed as much as Juno expected, either, as though the blood had been diverted. It’s so small, the hole left behind, and Juno covers it in two plasters.

Juno stays there on the counter while Nureyev wields the tweezers, and then they have two identical chips in the basin of the sink, small as fingernails, their wires touching like they were chambers of the same heart. Juno stares for a long time, his heart thrumming a fierce pattern beneath the plasters.

“That’s it,” he says.

Nureyev looks up with a weary smile. “That’s it.”

Early evening spreads through the apartment. When Juno and Nureyev emerge from the bathroom, Rita is cross-legged on the couch, computer in her lap. The look of triumph hasn’t faded from her scratched face. Before Juno can say a word, Rita says, “I’m following the reports on the THEIA tower. The whole city, really. I’ve never seen Hyperion City so alive.”

“Put it on so the rest of us can see.”

Rita casts it to the television. Nureyev settles against the edge of the couch and Juno slides in against him, careful not to brush Nureyev’s bandaged chest.

But when the reporters’ voices come on, when drone images of the tower and stills of the rubble inside fill the screen, Juno closes his eyes and lets it pass over him, resting against Nureyev’s shoulders.

When he wakes, it is midnight-dark and he is alone. He sits up on the couch, expecting the neon glow of billboards to illuminate the space, but he can only see by the dim yellow of streetlights.

New Hyperion did away with the billboards. O’Flaherty wanted a prettier city filled with prettier people.

Juno’s thoughts come slowly. He wonders where O’Flaherty is now, answering for the THEIA System, perhaps, or cutting the identity of Ramses O’Flaherty in half and pulling another on in its place.

He knows well enough that another confrontation will not bring any closure. He could scream his thought raw and never come closer to getting an apology. Would it be enough? Would it be what he wanted? What could Juno say to make him say it?

Sometimes you have to let the past die behind you. Maybe he will let this past die. Maybe he won’t look back.

Maybe he’ll live with that.

Juno looks around the room. A shape in the armchair, knees pulled up to their unbuttoned shirt hanging off one shoulder, the smooth expanse of skin. Nureyev. Juno takes the blanket that had covered him and lays it over Nureyev. Even in sleep, Nureyev’s brow is drawn. He’s no good at keeping his worries hidden when he lets his guard down.

But his eyes open, flicker, catch the yellow light. Sleep clings to their corners, to the corners of his lips. “Juno.”

Oh, and it sends a shiver through Juno.

“Didn’t want to disturb you,” Nureyev says. His eyes slip from Juno’s, slip back. “We can stay another night. Another few. Whatever you want.”

Juno bends down to kiss Nureyev’s forehead. “Plan in the morning. Go back to sleep.”

Nureyev hums. He takes Juno’s hand lightly and holds it like it’s a treasure, the motions of his fingers sloppy and soft. Then he pulls back and close his eyes. “Get some sleep yourself.”

On quiet feet, Juno goes into the kitchen and pours himself a glass of water, which he drinks while looking over the city. Everything feels soft, even though he can hear car engines and barking dogs, and can see, on the street below, a heated conversation. This is his city. No matter where he goes, it will always be his hometown.

But it’s shining, too, all the architectural changes the THEIA System made here to stay. A different skyline, the points of a hundred buildings like diamonds, sparkling and sure. The air clear.

Juno pushes up the window. Without his jacket, the cool air raises goosebumps on his skin. The conversation below drifts wordless up at him, through the apartment. Nureyev mumbles something, his voice sweet as milk in a space that Juno will never again call his.

The door to the bedroom is open, so Juno considers the romantic gesture of carrying Nureyev to bed. But his limbs are heavy and his eyes keep slipping closed, staying closed. Maybe he’s more tired than he thought, because by the time he hears breathing, he has been standing in the kitchen for minutes.

He turns, and it’s Rita at the table, her face lit with the blue light of her computer. “You should be asleep,” she whispers. “How many hours are you running on?”

“Not enough.” Carefully, Juno pulls out a chair and sits beside Rita. He rests his chin in his hands and stares out the window where once a billboard loomed. “But the insomnia isn’t new.”

“You’re not gonna stay here, are you?” She is watching him but he is not looking back.

Juno sighs. “No. I don’t think so.”

Rita closes her laptop. Without the blue light, every shape is hazy and soft. “I’ll take care of the city, Mister Steel.”

“You…?”

Soft and resolute, Rita says, “Scout’s honor. Rita is on the case, and trust me, Hyperion City will be just fine. You know I love it as much as you, and I’ll be fine, boss, promise. After what I pulled off, I’m pretty sure I can do anything.”

“You don’t have to call me boss.”

Rita gives a breathy laugh. “I know. It’s just that I never say your name and at this point if I said it, I think I’d have an allergic reaction. You’re always gonna be my boss, boss, in spirit, at least. And everything’s changed so fast.”

“You can come with us,” says Juno.

“Well, yeah, and I’ve thought about that. But the thing is, who’s going to look after Mars when you’re gone?”

Juno laughs, too, warm and embarrassed, and it feels so easy. Like the days before were a prelude and he can finally take a breath. Rita in the light of her city, Rita standing on her own, Rita making solemn promises in the dark for a future that Juno may not get to see but that will go on without him. The city in all its filthy glory, holding a piece of Juno forever. The part of the past that Juno is trying to let die.

Decades spent looking out for Hyperion City and he’s finally setting it down. Passing it over. It’s a deadly weight, he thinks, or maybe it just wasn’t for him.

He turns from the window to Rita, her frizzy hair, her face cleaned up and bandaged, and he is watching her put the city on her shoulders. She is strong enough to carry it. She is strong enough to lift it up. The only thing he regrets is that he will not be here to see it.

He says, “Then it’s in good hands.”

* * *

In the end, Juno does carry Nureyev to bed. After he leaves Rita, he rouses Nureyev again with a soft hand on his cheek. Nureyev’s eyes are more lucid this time, his fingers more demanding around Juno’s.

“You’ll get a crick in your neck,” Juno whispers.

“Shh,” says Nureyev. “I’m comfortable.”

“Come to bed,” says Juno. So Nureyev uncoils himself and reaches up.

It has been a long time since Juno has lifted anyone this way—usually it’s him being lifted, after all—but Nureyev puts his hands around Juno’s neck like it was practiced. In Juno’s arms, Nureyev seems small, all limbs and air and that drumming heartbeat. By the time Juno reaches the bedroom, he is dizzy with it. Nureyev holding on, arms relaxed and gentle on Juno’s spine, letting his eyes fall closed. The responsibility of Nureyev’s trust.

Beneath the covers, Nureyev curls up while Juno stretches out.

Juno’s mouth wants to say, _Everything will be better in the morning._ He thinks he does say it, because Nureyev mumbles something, and then, clearly, he says, “It already is.”

With Nureyev’s weight against his body, Juno falls heavy into sleep. The sounds of their breaths follow him down.

Juno wakes once more in the night. The sky is beginning to turn, and he can see the outline of Nureyev’s body beside him, his breathing so slow that Juno has to stare for a minute to be sure. Early morning, the sun a whisper behind the skyline. Juno could get up, now, and set their plan into action. He’s woken often enough in the early hours, secret hours in the city, the streets almost vacant but those who occupied them more alive than ever. 

Tonight, Juno has his arm beneath Nureyev’s body, Nureyev pressed against his chest. Both their feet stick out from beneath the covers. Juno’s arm tingles; he curls his fingers to restore circulation. Nureyev stirs at the movement, and, slowly, he cracks open his eyes.

“Nureyev.” It’s a breath between their cheeks, hot and hesitant. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

Nureyev closes his eyes for a second, and when he opens them they are clearer. “Can’t sleep, love?”

Juno’s heart a lit hearth, his breath thin as a songbird’s voice. He closes his eyes and Nureyev says _love, love._ He pulls Nureyev close. “I woke up, that’s all. Talk in the morning.”

Blinking slow, Nureyev tips his head up to meet Juno’s eyes. “Let’s take the first ship out of here.”

“That’s a plan I can get behind. Do you need to pack?”

Nureyev shifts, and the weight of him leaves Juno’s arm. Juno stretches while Nureyev props himself on an elbow and looks down. His hair almost a curtain, unbrushed and ungelled, falling over his brow and into his eyes.

“You know.” It’s soft, musing, a rumble in the night. With his free hand, Nureyev strokes Juno’s cheek, the days-old stubble on it, and Juno still closes his eyes. “I was sort of thinking of making a fresh start.”

“What do you mean?” says Juno. But already he knows. The careful weight in Nureyev’s voice, the way he lingers on _fresh._ And he is so beautiful, looking down at Juno with streetlights reflected in his eyes and his fingernails brushing Juno’s lips. Juno would do anything he asked for. They speak and it barely breaks the silence around them.

Rita is asleep in the living room and all around them the city is stretching its arms for the first time in months and Juno is so in love.

Nureyev bites his lip and lets it go, and Juno can’t look away. “New names. New identities. New lives. If that’s to your liking, of course.”

A pause, trepidation on Nureyev’s beautiful face.

Juno says, “Keep talking.”

Nureyev closes his eyes, the worry so dark on his face. “It’s funny. all my life, I had _this_ name to come back to. The only thing that was really, truly mine. But the game’s up. I’ve been Peter Nureyev—I’ve been User Peter Nureyev—to the world for months.”

Juno keeps his eyes on Nureyev and lets him talk.

“I’m sad to see it go, of course. Deeply sad, actually. And we don’t know enough, yet, to be sure the THEIA and everything it knows is gone forever. But if you want to stay, if you want to help rebuild, say the word, love, and we’ll stay.”

“No,” says Juno, but nothing comes out. He says it again, and that’s when Nureyev smiles.

“So what do you say?” says Nureyev.

Lilies in bloom across the face of Peter Nureyev, _Juno Steel_ shed like a heavy coat, a hand leading him toward the stars. Juno can see it now, all of it, a life with Nureyev. The past dead behind him. Left to die, at any rate.

“There’s a lot I need to tell you.” It rises almost frantic in Juno. “About who I am. Who I was. Where I’m from. I want to be honest with you about… me. You’ve given me everything, and…”

“And you can,” says Nureyev, his voice gentle and soothing. “Take all the time you need. I’m not going anywhere. Tell me in the morning.”

“What name?” says Juno. He doesn’t want to wait for the sun.

Nureyev’s smile grows, his sharp teeth bright in the growing light, the dimple deep in his left cheek.

“For you? I was thinking Glass. That has a ring to it, don’t you think? Juno Glass.”

And there in the Hyperion City predawn, Nureyev’s body heavy against his and the truth heavier still, Juno laughs.


End file.
